An investing group for do-it-yourself ETF investors.
Read us on Seeking Alpha? Here is what membership adds.
Know what you own. Look inside your ETFs.
No star ratings or black-box scores. Every week we take the most widely held U.S. ETFs apart, holding by holding, and show you the numbers underneath the ticker, so your conviction rests on what you actually own.
- Two chartbooks a week
- Four real-money portfolios, every trade alerted and explained
- The member tools, on your own holdings
- Fund requests, two a week, members first
- Every holding, not the top ten
- Four real-money model portfolios
- Two weekly chartbooks
- A Seeking Alpha Investing Group
The problem
Conviction is a research problem.
One ticker, hundreds of positions.
A broad index fund holds ~500 stocks. Put four funds together and you own several hundred companies, with the same names sitting in three of the funds at once.
The fact sheet stops at the top ten.
An expense ratio, a yield that may be trailing or forward, and ten names. The other few hundred positions, the earnings behind them, and the valuation of the whole book are not on it.
The drawdown is the test.
When a fund is down 20%, ‘it’s diversified’ is not a reason to hold. Earnings still growing, the dividend still covered, a valuation at the bottom of its own range: those are reasons, and you can only use them if you know them.
How we read a fund
Underneath the ticker it's a book of companies. So we read it like one.
Take four of the most widely held U.S. ETFs at 25% each. Portfolio X-Ray lays every position out by weight and by the fund it came from. Then the look-through starts: earnings, margins, free cash flow, dividend coverage, growth, and a forward valuation measured against the fund's own history.
What you own underneath
Each box is a company, sized by its weight in the mix and colored by the fund that holds the most of it. Click a box for each fund's share.Each bar is a company, colored by the fund that holds the most of it. Tap one for each fund's share.
Arrow keys step through the boxes, largest first.
Look-through valuation
Income, side by side
Run it on your own funds.
What you get
Monday to Saturday, in a fixed rotation.
You know what's coming before you open the email.
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Monday
- Growth Model Portfolio update
- Income Model Portfolio update
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Tuesday
- Member-requested ETF coverage article
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Wednesday
- ETFTrackFirst Wednesday
- Live Q&AThird Wednesday
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Thursday
- Member-requested ETF coverage article
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Friday
- Dividend Monitor
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Saturday
- Macro Market Monitor
Model portfolios
Four all-ETF portfolios, growth to income.
Built from funds we hold with our own money, and liquid enough to run at any size. Every trade comes with an alert and the reasoning, and the trade log stays up.
Chartbooks
Two chartbooks a week, through the lens of ETFs.
The Macro Market Monitor on Saturdays: indexes, sectors, tech, factors, gold, Treasuries, volatility, rates and credit. The Dividend Monitor on Fridays: dividend and dividend-growth funds, holding by holding.
Member tools
Built for our own research. Yours with membership.
No proprietary scores or black-box formulas. Every ETF’s raw holdings, filings and fund data, assembled into one complete picture.
Four funds, four sides of the research.
Vanguard Total World Stock ETF (VT)
How far the research goes: every holding, every company, every country.
Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF (SCHD)
What the dividend pays, how it has grown, and whether the companies can afford it.
Goldman Sachs S&P 500 Premium Income ETF (GPIX)
Option income measured: the calls it sells, what each month paid, and what the price gave up.
VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH)
The fundamentals under the fund: valuation, margins and where the sales come from.
Screens from ETF Research and the Income Hub, captured Nov 3, 2026. Each chart carries its own as-of date. The member tools open any U.S. ETF the same way.
Macro pages
Eight macro pages, read through ETFs.
Each page also tracks the money flows and short interest in its own ETFs.
Is this for you
This is for you if
- You build and hold your portfolio out of ETFs, for growth, for income, or both.
- You compare two or three funds before you buy one.
- You already know the fact sheet doesn't hold all the answers.
It isn't, if
- You want stock picks, CEFs, BDCs, REITs or mutual funds.
- You want corporate or municipal bond coverage. We do Treasuries.
- You trade on a week-long horizon. The portfolios rebalance a few times a year, and the tactical sleeve trades about monthly.
Who's writing
Jack Bowman and Cain Lee
Jack Bowman
Co-founder
Columnist, investment advisor, portfolio manager; former economics educator. A top-5% TipRanks Expert, author of The Macro Obsession newsletter, and self-proclaimed ETF evangelist. Jack runs the Macro Market Monitor and the Growth Model Portfolio.
Cain Lee
Co-founder
Financial analyst with 15+ years of active investing, from a corporate background across industries. An income and dividend specialist with options and alternatives experience, and author of Dividendomics, a Substack bestseller. Writes the Dividend Monitor and runs the Income Model Portfolios.
We run the model portfolios with our own money, alongside members.
How it works
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Join on Seeking Alpha.
Membership runs through Seeking Alpha's Investing Groups: one checkout, and the articles, chat room and alerts live there. You don't need a Seeking Alpha Premium subscription.
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Your welcome email carries the member-site password.
That opens every tool above.
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The first deliverable lands on the next publishing day.
Then the rotation runs, Monday to Saturday.
Questions
What is ETF Portfolio Mechanics?
ETF Portfolio Mechanics is a Seeking Alpha Investing Group built around ETF research: holdings-level, look-through analysis of the most widely held U.S. ETFs, four real-money all-ETF model portfolios for growth and income, two weekly ETF chartbooks (the Macro Market Monitor and the Dividend Monitor), a monthly report of every U.S. ETF launch and closure (ETFTrack), and a member research portal with tools like Portfolio X-Ray and ETF Compare. It is co-led by Jack Bowman and Cain Lee and covers ETFs only: equity, dividend, option-income, alternatives, gold and Treasury funds.
Do I need Seeking Alpha Premium?
No. Membership is separate from Seeking Alpha Premium, and you don't need Premium to join.
Which funds do you cover?
~30 of the most widely held U.S. ETFs every week across the two chartbooks, plus any U.S. ETF a member asks for, two of those a week. Equity, dividend, option-income, alternatives, gold and Treasuries. Not corporate or municipal bond funds, and not stocks, CEFs, BDCs or mutual funds.
How often do the portfolios trade?
A few times a year. The growth portfolio carries a tactical sleeve that trades about once a month. Every trade comes with an alert and the reasoning, and the trade log stays up for members.
Can I ask you to cover a fund?
Yes. Two member-requested tickers a week, up to four when it's a comparison. First-time requesters go first, and members see requested coverage before anyone else.
When does each piece publish?
Portfolio updates on Monday, requested coverage on Tuesday and Thursday, the Dividend Monitor on Friday, the Macro Market Monitor on Saturday, ETFTrack on the first Wednesday of the month, and a live Q&A on the third Wednesday.
Be first in.
Look inside your ETFs, every week, with two analysts who hold the same funds.