Who Is Dave Mazza and Why the SPDR Index Man Switched to 2x Leveraged Memory Funds

Dave Mazza is the chief executive of Roundhill Financial, the New York firm behind the Roundhill Memory ETF that trades under the ticker DRAM. He was born in 1982 and began his career at State Street Global Advisors, leading the strategy and research team for SPDR ETFs before moving into leveraged products.

Think of it as the plumbing of passive investing, the desk where somebody decides what an index is allowed to own and in what weight.

If you're searching his name, you probably watched him explain the memory-chip trade on television. The filings underneath tell a stranger story, and one line of an officer table does most of the work.

Dave Mazza at a Glance

Who Is Dave Mazza?

Mazza joined Roundhill Financial in 2023 as Chief Strategy Officer and took the chief executive seat in 2024. The firm was founded in late 2018 by Timothy Maloney and William Hershey, both born in 1989, and both stepped out of their C-suite titles that year.

Before Roundhill he spent 2018 to 2023 as Managing Director and Head of Product at Rafferty Asset Management, the adviser behind the Direxion fund family. Rafferty is where an index researcher learns to build daily-reset leverage. It's the hinge in the whole record.

His public profile is narrower than the title suggests. He turns up on financial television as the person who can explain memory chips, and those appearances cluster between April and June 2026. Demand ran to the trade, with him as the available voice.

How Did Dave Mazza Get From SPDR Research to Leveraged Funds?

Step 1, index research at State Street. He began at State Street Global Advisors with research, portfolio management and product development duties, including leading the strategy and research team for SPDR ETFs. No primary we could open puts a date on that stretch.

Step 2, a leadership role at OppenheimerFunds. The record carries the same gap here and offers the same answer. The SEC confirms the employer and the order of the moves and stops there, so any bio that dates those jobs is going beyond the document.

Step 3, Rafferty Asset Management from 2018 to 2023. Five dated years as Managing Director and Head of Product at the adviser behind Direxion, building the daily-reset leveraged and inverse funds that index research exists to avoid.

Step 4, Roundhill in 2023 and the top seat in 2024. Chief Strategy Officer for a year, then chief executive. Both co-founders stayed at the firm, and inside the fund trust both of them stayed above him.

What Do the Numbers Behind Roundhill Really Say?

That $5.378 billion is the number the filing will stand behind, and it reads identically for Mazza, Maloney and Hershey, because the three of them are named on the same portfolios.

Roundhill's own releases quote a far larger asset figure and source it to a data vendor we don't cite, so this page uses the filing's count instead.

Why Dave Mazza's Story Matters Beyond ETFs

Index research exists to take decisions out of a portfolio. Daily-reset leverage puts every one of them back, at twice the size. The same career covers both ends, and that's the part of this record people skip.

For fund issuers. The distance between a passive research desk and a leveraged product desk is one career move, and the people drafting the prospectuses came up on index committees.

For investors. RAM is a 2x daily-leveraged ETF whose underlying is another ETF. Two layers of fee, and a reset that works like a ratchet on your holding period. We have already worked the daily-reset compounding math through on SOXL.

For traders. The memory theme got a leveraged wrapper less than three months after the unlevered one. That cadence tells you where issuer attention goes, and it usually arrives after the move rather than before it.

What Should Traders Watch Next?

- The officer table, not the press release. The 4 September 2026 filing lists Hershey as President of the trust and Maloney as Chairman, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer. The chief executive of the firm appears as Vice President.

- RAM is not in his trust at all. The Roundhill T-REX 2X Long DRAM Daily Target ETF is a series of ETF Opportunities Trust, registered on Cboe BZX on 23 June 2026. T-REX is a partner's brand and the launch was a joint one.

- Fund inception dates are not exchange listing dates. DRAM's fund opened 2 April 2026 and its Phemex contract listed 19 May 2026. RAM's fund opened 24 June 2026 and its contract listed 27 August 2026.

- He does not have 2x DRAM to himself. Defiance runs the Daily Target 2X Long DRAM ETF under the ticker DRAL out of Tidal Trust II, and cut that fund's management fee from 1.29% to 0.69% effective 20 August 2026.

How to Trade the Trends Dave Mazza Represents

Via TradFi perpetuals. Phemex lists both funds as perpetual contracts settled in USDT, so you can trade the price around the clock without a US brokerage account.

DRAM-USDT carries maximum leverage of 10x and RAM-USDT carries 20x, which tells you how the venue ranks the risk of a levered fund against its unlevered parent.

Via the underlying theme. If you want the sector rather than the wrapper, what the Roundhill Memory ETF actually holds is the place to start, because a swap-based fund is not the same exposure as the chips themselves.

The margin mechanics are identical either way, and how leverage trading works covers what a liquidation price does to a 20x position.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Dave Mazza?

Dave Mazza is the Chief Executive Officer of Roundhill Financial, the ETF issuer behind the Roundhill Memory ETF. He joined the firm in 2023 and has held the top role since 2024.

What did Dave Mazza do before Roundhill?

He was Managing Director and Head of Product at Rafferty Asset Management from 2018 to 2023, and before that held roles at OppenheimerFunds and State Street Global Advisors.

Is Dave Mazza the president of the Roundhill ETF Trust?

No, the firm's co-founder William Hershey is the president of the trust. Mazza appears as Vice President in the officer table of the registration filing dated 4 September 2026.

What is Dave Mazza's connection to SPDR ETFs?

He began his career at State Street Global Advisors, where he led the strategy and research team for the SPDR ETF range. The filing itself gives no dates for that period.

What can traders learn from Dave Mazza?

Read the officer table before you read the marketing. A title at the firm and a title at the fund trust are different things, and only one of them is filed with a regulator.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always conduct your own research before making trading decisions.