01
Valuation-Driven Entry
Entry is valuation-led.
Start with what is attractive relative to fundamentals and history.
Valuation vs. 10-Year History (Example: P/E Forward)
Philosophy
Fundamental, with a catalyst.
Valuation discipline sets the entry. An observable catalyst shapes the timing. The same two questions have governed every Main Management position since 2002.
A — Two pillars
Two questions every position has to answer.
Valuation tells us where to look. A catalyst tells us when to act. The first sets the entry; the second shapes the timing.
02
Catalyst-Aware Timing
Timing is catalyst-led.
The catalyst may be a cycle inflection, policy shift, rate move, earnings turn, or liquidity change.
Market & Economic Cycle (Illustrative)
Policy shift
Rate move
Earnings turn
Liquidity change
The same philosophy underpins Main’s strategy lineup, model portfolios, and advisor partnerships.
The firm behind the work
The same discipline, since 2002.
Main Management was founded in 2002 as an early adopter of building active, transparent portfolios with ETFs — long before that approach was common. We’re partner-owned and independent, with no outside parent steering the research, and the same investment team runs every vehicle: the Main ETFs, model portfolios on the major platforms, and directly managed accounts for institutions and private clients.
i.
Partner-owned & independent
No outside owners. No quarterly pressure to chase a flow. The investment view answers to itself.
ii.
Refined through cycles
Twenty-plus years, four full market cycles. Every cycle teaches the process something the prior one did not.
iii.
Major platform availability
Live on the platforms advisors actually use — LPL, Orion, Envestnet, GWN, Altruist, and more.
iv.
Active since 2002
Same firm. Same philosophy. The team you talk to today is the team running the portfolios.
B — The evidence base
Hundreds of signals. One committee view.
We monitor more than four hundred macro, fundamental, and sentiment indicators across the asset classes we invest in. Triangulation is what we are after — conviction comes from what survives once the noise cancels out.
i.
Valuation & fundamentals
The math of the position — what we are paying, what we are getting, how the trend is moving.
- Forward P/E, P/B, P/S by sector and country
- Historical percentile bands & relative valuation
- Earnings revisions, margins, free-cash-flow yield
- Analyst estimate dispersion & quality
- Capex, buybacks, balance-sheet health
ii.
Macro & catalyst
The forces that move markets between asset classes — rates, growth, policy, the dollar.
- Rates, credit spreads, yield-curve shape
- ISM, PMI, and sector-sensitivity readings
- Currency regime and USD direction
- Policy, regulation, geopolitics
- Commodity and capital-cycle inflections
iii.
Sentiment & technical
What the market is doing — positioning, breadth, flows, the things that move before fundamentals do.
- Breadth and advance-decline composites
- Positioning, flows, and short interest
- Volatility regime and term structure
- Relative-strength trend persistence
- Cross-asset correlation breaks
See the philosophy in practice.
Walk through the current portfolio positioning, the two questions behind each weight, or how the framework would sit alongside what you already run.