John McHugh was recognized in the 2024 edition of Marquis Who’s Who in the financial services category with a further 2025 recognition as a Distinguished Leader in the Institutional Asset Management Category. Distinguished Leaders represent only a small percentage of the global population.
Link to the Wall Street Journal’s Who’s Who Announcement:
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John brings extensive experience to WealthTrust’s investment process. His extensive background in financial analysis informs the firm’s disciplined approach to security selection.
Most portfolio managers will tell you what they own. John McHugh wants to explain why he sold.
In 2022, while some growth managers rode the Magnificent Seven down through a brutal correction, the WealthTrust DBS Long Term Growth ETF (ticker: WLTG) was rotating out of those same names into a portfolio oriented toward growth at a reasonable price (GARP). The move wasn’t prescient market timing—rather, the strategy’s quantitative screens were signaling deteriorating momentum and estimate revisions. The methodology simply told him to get out.
As President and Chief Investment Officer of WealthTrust Asset Management, McHugh has spent 23 years building an investment approach that seeks long-term capital growth through what he calls a “dual purpose” methodology: combining tactical asset allocation with rigorous stock selection. The framework stems from a straightforward observation.
“There are always opportunities,” McHugh says. “Since 2002, we’ve been using the same methodology that we have now, and there’s only been one year, basically one time period, where there wasn’t a sector that you could invest in. And that was 2008.”
A Framework Built on Flexibility
WLTG operates through two distinct portfolio sleeves. The DBS Core sleeve, representing approximately 75% of assets, invests primarily in individual equities and American depositary receipts (ADRs) using quantitative methodology. The DBS Tactical Edge sleeve, making up roughly the remaining assets, deploys passive ETFs through what McHugh describes as a trend analysis program.
The tactical component gives the strategy room to maneuver when conditions shift. When WLTG’s trend analysis and macroeconomic assessment signal the need to reduce risk, the 25% allocated to passive ETFs can be repositioned into inverse ETFs such as the ProShares Short S&P500 (SH) or ProShares Short QQQ (PSQ), potentially creating up to a 50% hedge on the portfolio’s market exposure. The execution requires discipline and constant monitoring.
“You have to be very careful,” says McHugh. “You’ve got to follow the trends, look at the macro situation. We feel really good at doing that. So, we look at the macro situation, and it’s helped us quite a bit in the past”.
The flexibility reaches past binary risk positioning. Within the tactical sleeve, the strategy can rotate between asset classes and market capitalizations as conditions warrant.
We have strong indicators to help us know when it’s time to get out of growth,” he adds. “So, we can have large-cap growth in our portfolio, and we go from growth to value. Or, we can go from large-cap to small-cap, or we can go to emerging markets if we want to. We can go to an inverse ETF if we think it’s the right thing to do.”
The Perfect Match Philosophy
The Core sleeve represents where WealthTrust seeks to generate alpha through individual stock selection. The process starts with sector identification, determining which areas demonstrate favorable trends, then drills down to finding the highest-quality names.
“Our methodology looks at which sectors are in favor too,” McHugh explains. “So, let’s say, for example, technology is a sector that’s in favor and healthcare is in favor, and maybe two others are in favor. We can go down into those sectors and identify what we believe to be the best stocks within those sectors.”
WLTG screens approximately 9,000 companies from 48 countries, capturing more than 98% of the investable universe. The proprietary process eliminates roughly 90% of the universe based on various criteria, including WealthTrust’s Quant Ranking system—a quantitative score from 1 to 5 (1 being a strong buy and 5 a strong sell, with only securities ranked 1–3 considered for inclusion) updated daily and based on factors including analyst agreement, magnitude of estimate changes, upside potential, and earnings surprises.
The screening also considers valuation metrics such as price-to-earnings ratios, price/earnings-to-growth ratios, projected growth rates, interest coverage, debt-to-capital ratios, free cash flow, and insider ownership levels. This active management approach seeks to reduce exposure to overvalued sectors and capitalize on market opportunities. Please see a description of these statistics in the disclosure below.
After the initial screening process narrows the universe to approximately 250 companies, the team reviews the remaining candidates and selects 30 to 35 primarily large-cap names—companies with market capitalizations of $10 billion or more at the time of purchase—demonstrating quality earnings and reasonable valuations relative to the overall market or their peers. Historically, the fund has missed earnings expectations of 5% to 10% of holdings on a quarterly basis, compared to a market miss rate of 25% to 35%, McHugh notes. Based on internal records of past earnings results.
In 2023, WealthTrust added **Algorithmic Trend Analysis** to identify what McHugh calls “perfect matches”—companies ranking in the top tier across multiple quantitative factors. The enhancement allows the strategy to ride momentum as long as fundamental support remains intact, departing from conventional wisdom about selling winners after significant appreciation.
The dual-direction capability provides another dimension. Beyond identifying matches through momentum screens, the strategy can spot attractive companies through traditional quantitative analysis and then verify their momentum characteristics.
“So, we can find it, we buy it, we can track it, we can put it into our momentum screen and our database and track whether it goes from a good to a great, perfect match,” McHugh says. “Or let’s say it goes from a good to a poor or a weak match. That gives us the idea of when it’s time to get out of that stock, when we feel it’s time to buy it, maybe add to the position because it’s moved from a good momentum type stock to a great momentum type stock.”
The GARP emphasis reflects a focus on downside mitigation. “We won’t take that risk on as much as some of the growth money managers may do, but we do have a growth stint within our strategy,” McHugh explains. “Our goal is to help mitigate the downside.”
Utilizing Grok or ChatPic for singular investment opportunity Identification
Beyond the algorithmic screens and quantitative rankings that form the backbone of WealthTrust’s process, McHugh has begun incorporating Grok and/or ChatPic tools as a complementary layer for finding investment opportunities the market may be mispricing. As an example, when the favored-nation pricing program threatened certain drug manufacturers, or when auto supply companies corrected downward reacting to tariffs in their sector, WealthTrust used Grok to help identify companies that were oversold or unlikely to face significant impact. “There’s many ways to skin the cat as far as identifying companies using the new technologies that are out there, using the information that you can obtain to help you with your portfolio management,” he says.
The Advisor Partnership Model
McHugh emphasizes an aspect of WLTG extending beyond returns: accessibility. Unlike many asset managers where advisors interface primarily with wholesalers, WealthTrust aims to provide direct access to portfolio management and ongoing support. “We’re not so big that you can’t get a hold of the money manager. I’m available,” he says. “You’re not talking to some marketing rep. You’re not talking to somebody who really doesn’t understand how their process works. We teach our process not only to some extent to the advisors themselves, but we also teach it to their clients.”
In an industry where asset scale often creates distance between portfolio managers and the advisors using their strategies—where phone calls are routed to internal wholesalers and marketing teams answer questions, McHugh’s direct access model represents a structural differentiation. “That’s something I don’t think very many money managers provide to the advisors that they work with access to the actual portfolio manager,” he emphasizes. WealthTrust conducts webinars and seminars where advisors can participate in explaining the investment process to clients. “You have to love to do it,” McHugh says. “You also must love to communicate with people. One of the things we do is help advisors increase their AUM. We do seminars with them. We do webinars. We will strive to help them build their assets under management.”
McHugh also highlights complimentary portfolio assessments using WealthTrust’s methodology. Rather than relying on backward-looking analysis, the reviews examine momentum characteristics and quantitative rankings to assess future potential. “We can do a portfolio review for any advisor out there,” he notes. “That’s free of charge.”
The WealthTrust dual-sleeve structure aims to provide diversification through both the tactical component and individual holdings. “The passive ETFs give it significant diversification, and then the actual individual holdings add to that diversification,” explains McHugh. Advisors can implement WLTG as a stand-alone investment or integrate the strategy within broader allocations.
Looking back on 23 years of deploying the methodology through multiple market cycles, McHugh frames WealthTrust’s value proposition in terms of partnership rather than product distribution. “I think the most important thing is that we’re here for the advisors,” he says. “Our goal as a team is to help them with their clientele, help them build a business.”
The statement encapsulates an approach where WLTG serves as both investment strategy and ongoing relationship—combining tactical flexibility, quantitative rigor, and manager accessibility in a single ticker symbol.
Statistic Descriptions: The strategy emphasizes rigorous fundamental analysis using a variety of valuation, quality, and ownership measures:
- Price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios:
Used to assess how much investors are paying for each dollar of a company’s earnings, helping identify stocks that appear undervalued or overvalued relative to their own history, sector peers, and the broader market. - Price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratios:
Evaluated to determine whether a stock’s valuation is reasonable considering its expected earnings growth. This helps avoid paying excessive multiples for growth that may already be fully priced in. - Projected growth rates:
Forward-looking estimates of revenue and earnings growth are analyzed to gauge a company’s long-term potential and to distinguish sustainable growth from cyclical or temporary trends. - Interest coverage:
Measures a company’s ability to service its debt from operating earnings. Higher coverage ratios indicate stronger balance sheet resilience and lower risk during periods of economic stress or rising rates. - Debt-to-capital ratios:
Used to evaluate leverage and capital structure. Companies with more conservative leverage profiles are generally favored, all else equal, to reduce balance sheet risk and earnings volatility. - Free cash flow (FCF):
Assessed to determine a company’s capacity to reinvest in its business, reduce debt, pay dividends, or repurchase shares. Strong and consistent free cash flow supports valuation and can provide downside protection. - Insider ownership levels:
Monitored to ensure management’s interests are aligned with shareholders. Higher insider ownership can signal confidence in the company’s prospects and promote more disciplined capital allocation.
This active management approach uses these metrics collectively to:
- Reduce exposure to overvalued sectors and securities by avoiding companies with stretched valuations unsupported by fundamentals or balance sheet quality.
- Capitalize on market opportunities by selectively adding to companies with attractive valuations, solid growth prospects, strong financial profiles, and aligned management incentives.
Before investing you should carefully consider the Fund’s investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other information is in the prospectus or summary prospectus, a copy of which can be downloaded by visiting https://wealthtrustetf.com or by calling 844-444-3863. Please read the prospectus or summary prospectus carefully before you invest. Investing involves risk including the possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Information presented is for educational and informational purposes only intended for a broad audience. The information does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and are not guaranteed. WealthTrust Asset Management has reasonable belief that this marketing does not include any false or material misleading statements or omissions of facts regarding services, investments, or client experiences.
The Fund’s performance depends on the skill of the Adviser in evaluating, selecting, and monitoring the growth rates and values of portfolio assets using tactical trend models and quantitative analysis. There can be no assurance that use of this methodology will enable the Fund to achieve positive returns or outperform the market. To the extent the Fund invests in ETFs, the Fund will indirectly bear its proportionate share of any expenses as well as risks. Some of these risks are investments in foreign securities which may involve currency fluctuations, political and social instability, and reduced market liquidity. Investments made in small and mid-capitalization companies may be more volatile and less liquid due to limited resources or product lines and more sensitive to economic factors.
The fund may invest in inverse ETFs, and the value of such investment will decrease when the index underlying the ETF’s benchmark rises, a result that is the opposite from traditional equity or bond funds. The net asset value and market price of an inverse ETFs are usually more volatile than the value of the tracked index or of other ETFs that do not use leverage. This is because inverse ETFs use investment techniques and financial instruments that may be considered aggressive, including the use of derivative transactions which may be more sensitive to changes in market conditions and may amplify the risk of loss for the Fund.
The WealthTrust ETF is distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC.
