D (2:45)

Right.

A (2:45)

People under, people understand this. There's a trade off for the income

C (2:47)

and yes, trade offs. That's right. Ben.

A (2:50)

I do think it's interesting that we've seen the popularity of these strategies that there's now offshoots. All right, we, if you, if you like this but you want something different, here's another option here. Here it is on the Nasdaq. Here it is where the, the income will be automatically reinvested for the option income if you're not going to spend it. Here are some different ways to do this with different holdings. And so Hamilton gets into that with us today with some of their new funds that they're using on the S and P and more NASDAQ like. And I think these things are going to continue to just evolve and have more options. Pun intended, I guess there.

C (3:21)

There you go.

A (3:22)

Okay, so we always love talking to Hamilton and the last time we saw him we mentioned every time we go to Future Proof I see him at the concert. That's the only place I see him is he's rocking out to the concert right next to us. Anyway, great guy. Always love catching up with him. Here's our talk with Hamilton Rayner from J.P. morgan.

C (3:40)

Hamilton, welcome back to the show.

D (3:42)

Glad to be back. Good to see you guys in Miami. Thanks for having.

C (3:47)

Great to see you too. I'm sorry we didn't get to spend more time together but it was great seeing your face.

A (3:50)

We always see Hamilton at the music show. That's where I always run into in the crowd watching the music.

D (3:56)

Absolutely. One of the highlights.

C (3:58)

All right, so Jeppy is still the largest actively traded etf. Gotta be right.

D (4:07)

It's the largest active ETF in the world by Aum and holy cow.

C (4:12)

Coming up the rear. Jeb Q is a monster too. Jeb Q has $33 billion in assets under management. This is we're recording Monday, March 30th.

D (4:20)

It has and, and it makes sense though Michael because if you think about it, when else can you hear growth in tech income and having expected less risk and volatility. Those three things are evergreen when thinking about clients portfolios. Usually an income oriented investor is missing out on growth in tech.

C (4:38)

That is true. That is true. There are so many. We've covered this the previous times that we've had you on. There is no free launch silver bullet. These things have trade offs. You are going to be probably not probably definitionally leaving some, some on the table in a rip boring bull market. But the idea is that when you're in a drawdown, you're going to suffer less of the drawdown. And it's early in the year, but not that early. It's, it's. We're through the first quarter so there's

D (5:08)

a couple components to that. Obviously the options premium helps buffer that a little bit and Ben may not want to hear it, but I'll go there anyways. The active management of our stock selection has actually helped. So Ben, I'm sorry but active management can help in both up and down markets.

A (5:24)

What are you coming at me for?

D (5:27)

I heard that you were, I heard you were a boglehead.

C (5:30)

Oh, he sure is. Died in the wolf.

A (5:32)

80%. What are the stocks working this year? So you're like a high quality, low volume, like what is the, what is the. If you had a, you know, put it down to a factor, what is helping this year?

D (5:42)

Yeah, so I wouldn't call it a factor. I'd say it's good old fashioned stock selection. But what's helping is Jeffy by design, you know, was designed to be one of the more conservative ways of getting income as well as a conservative equity. So how to think about that? Loan portfolio number one, is very well diversified. We cap every name at about 2%. So we're going to be underweight the mega spend. The second thing is, is that we want to be well diversified across sectors and we know that, you know, whether it be communications or tech have actually become a huge part of the S and P. We cap every sector at about 17 and a half percent. So the diversification across sectors and across names has actually been a nice tailwind.

C (6:23)

So 2022 was. Correct me if I'm wrong, I feel like 2022 was the year of JEPI because it launched a Cambrian explosion of these derivative based products inside of etf. So the option overlays all sorts of different strategies. But in 2022 not only did you protect the downside via the options in a down market, but it was the stock selection in 2022. It sounds like the stock selection is, is similarly adding Alpha in 2026. What is the methodology behind this good old fashioned stock picking?

D (6:59)

You're right. I mean 2022, the stock selection and the sector allocations and being a more balanced allocation, not being as much in the megas was absolutely a tailwind. When I think about what we do, we actually are lucky enough, Michael, to have boots on the ground. Across the world we have 80 analysts, they all speak the same language when it comes to stock selection, a $200 million research budget. And when you, when you have that opportunity to have access to management and to do the actual analysis, picking stocks, that will give you a little bit more of the upside, maybe less the downside. Now, when I think about stock selection, one of the things that's important to me is it's not just how much you buy. Excuse me, it's not what you buy, but it's how much. Actually, stock selection is only 50% of the alpha, is how much of it you buy. The weighting of it is also incredibly important. And so strategies like Jeff B and Jeff Q actually balance not just stock selection, but portfolio construction.

A (7:57)

I have a question for you about your process, because I don't know what the right answer is. Are you a guy that says, listen, the process is the process. This is what we do, all discipline, or do you say no, the process can evolve over time. Our stock selection can evolve, types of stocks we own. How are you? Are you like, no, it's set in stone. Or do you say no? No, we're pretty flexible here.

D (8:17)

A couple of things I would say, Ben, I would say that there is a process, but the process is not that it's this way or the highway. It learns, it grows, it develops. As you get new information, I forget who we can attribute the quote to. I know you guys always know who said the quote. But when the information changes, I reserve the right to change my opinion. Was that Keynes?

C (8:38)

Yes, allegedly.

D (8:40)

I think it was. I think it was allegedly Keynes. But the fact is, is we have a process where we look at cash flows, you know, in a normalized rolled out three years and forecast out 30 years of cash flows. And then we're trying to say, what is this company worth today? So is that a process? Yes. Are we going to change it based upon information or new sources or other things that we can glean? Absolutely. But you need to, you need to root yourself in something to create perspective. You just can't come in every day and say, what did I read on Reddit? Or speaking Alpha? And they say, that's going to be my favorite name of the day. That's where actually people chop themselves up. And I think it destroyed.

C (9:17)

There is no shortage of different option oriented strategies. In fact, there's, there's a glut. It's, it's overwhelming. How should investors who are listening to this think about observing or diligencing you versus a competitor? What questions should they be asking?

D (9:36)

There's a couple things to that, Michael. The first thing I would Say is we philosophically believe it's not just about income, it's about toll return where income is a portion of it. You see these gaudy numbers in which there's huge, enormous distributions monthly or annually. And what you end up seeing is people have massive nav erosion and clients, even if they got the income, oftentimes forget and they see their navs go from 100 to 80 to 60. And that's not actually a good thing from an overall portfolio perspective. So you don't like nav erosion. The second thing is, I'll come back to something that Ben alluded to, and that is you should almost ignore the income. Why? All of these strategies are going to give you income. You first need to start with what kind of stocks do you want to own? With a strategy like Jeppy, you're looking for higher quality names with predictable earnings. With a strategy like Jeff Q, you're looking for more of a growth in tech footprint. But when you think about some of these other strategies, if you just look at the income, you may buy a stock you don't like, but because of the income, you buy it. If you look at some of these other strategies that I would say, you know, some, some, some folks say you need a PhD to understand what they do. A lot of financial engineering, you don't need to be complex to make money. You don't need to be complex to invest. I mean, it kind of goes back to what does one, we want to age old philosophies. I have, if I can't explain to somebody, I probably shouldn't be investing in it. So with our strategies, you understand what you're buying, the type of stocks, you're understanding how the income is generated. You're understanding that at a place like JP Morgan, we have not just portfolio managers and analysts. It takes a village to manage strategy like this. Middle office, back office, clearance, custody, cloud management, cash management, corporate actions, trading, pricing, cap markets. I mean, you need that village. As you guys know, stocks don't die. Stocks either get taken over, they go bankrupt or they live forever. Options die. You need that team of people in order to do these things well. And so I would say it's not about that big gaudy income number. It's about really creating that balance of total return and income. Michael, those are some of the things I would say.

A (11:54)

I'm curious. So you have the biggest active etf. I don't know if they give you like a belt to wear around the office for that. But there's all these other Michael mentioned, there's been an explosion in these products. Do all these other option income seeking funds, do they. Is it a drop in the bucket in the options market, or could these funds actually change the market in some ways? Is there any. Is there any difference because all these funds are seeking this income? Or is it just like. No, no, no. You don't even realize how big the options market is. This is nothing.

D (12:21)

It's a good point, Ben. And the first thing I would say is, is that the s and P500, the granddaddy of all options, actually trades over three and a half trillion dollars per day.

C (12:32)

What?

D (12:32)

And one of the push. One of the pushbacks I'll get and Michael's going to push back is like, how about those zero dates? Well, let's just say that's half. It's still 1.75 trillion per day. These are some of the most liquid, if not the most liquid equities in the world. So I would say if you're using S&P 500 index options as the benchmark, as the, as the options, they truly are, you know, a small fraction of the overall market. The NASDAQ also trades an enormous amount. Not nearly as much of the S P, but a significant number, at least 600, 650 billion a day. And once again, those options are a. Oh, and that's notional for both S P and Nasdaq. Those options in those strategies are still a tiny fraction. Where it could come into play is in some of the single names. Because the fact is there's only so big you could be, whether it be position limits or the actual number of options that trade on individual names. I would say the big guys, you know, the Mag 7 +3 or wherever you want to call them, the Fabulous 10, probably can withstand the amount of options that are trading, but as you go farther and farther down, it probably comes a little bit more challenging at some point then.

C (13:48)

So I was going to ask about the retail crowd getting into the option game in a big, big, big way. And I don't know if they're primarily using individual stocks or if they're using the indexes or both or whatever, but one of the things about Jeppy, correct me if I'm wrong, that makes you different from a lot of the competitors is that you are not writing option overlays at the index level. You're actually doing it at the stock level. So talk about that dynamic.

D (14:13)

So actually, in Jeppy, we are doing options at the index level, not on individual names.

C (14:18)

Just kidding.

A (14:19)

Okay.

D (14:19)

But the reason we do that is something that's important and that is you don't want to be having your winners taken away and left with your losers. Just go back to November. What happened? I think Google is up about 15% and Nvidia was down 15%. If you sold options on both of them, you would have been capped out in your Google and eaten all the downside Nvidia. But if you do options at the index level, you get all the alpha of Google as well as all the alpha with Nvidia. But you don't get capped down your winners and left with your losers. It's just not a good investment process.

A (14:53)

So what's next? So you have Jeppy, which is high quality S&P 500 ish.

C (14:59)

Jeff Q. I believe tried and true is what you say on a podcast.

A (15:02)

Ben. Okay, blue chip, is that fair? Is it blue chip fair or not?

D (15:06)

Oh, I'll take blue chip. I love blue chip.

A (15:09)

All right, so what's next after Jeffy and Jeff Q.

D (15:12)

About, about nine months ago? Actually, no, about eight. Eight months ago, we launched a strategy for young folks like yourselves. It's a call override strategy, but instead of paying you out the distributions, we only pay out the dividends. But we keep the options premium inside the strategy. Because imagine if I give you the distribution only for you to give it back to me, it may create a taxable event. Why would you ever do that? So we have a strategy that reinvests the options premium so it doesn't distribute it. That's number one. So we are the only firm that we're aware of that has the ability to pay out its income as a coupon. 1099. That's Jeffy and Jeff Q. We believe we're one of the few, if not the only ones that can actually reinvest our options premium. And then just a few weeks back, we launched two strategies that we hope will defer a portion of the distributions. One on the S&P 500 called Rocky. We like the ticker Rocy. And then another one based on the NASDAQ Rock Q Rocq and being both music guys, you guys could appreciate we will Rock Q does not stink as far as a tagline.

A (16:25)

I like it. The commercial rights itself. So how does the. Before we get into these new strategies, how does the reinvesting option, how does that work in practice? So that, that's just. It's more tax efficient and you say, listen, I'm going to reinvest my dividends anyway, so. Or my income anyway. How, how does that work in Practice.

D (16:42)

The fact is many people own income oriented strategies, whether it be stocks, mutual funds, ETFs and only to give back these strategies. The money as part of a dividend reinvestment. Right. DRIPs are one of the greatest things ever to actually continuously compound your wealth. But so if you have the ability to pay your bills and don't need that monthly distribution, but you like the risk profile of a call override strategy, why would I make the distribution only for you to give it back to me? So joy t a little joy to your portfolio is about paying out the dividends because the IRS makes me pay out dividends. But instead of paying out the options premium, let it just accumulate inside the strategy compound and work for you. I don't think Keynes actually had that compounding eighth wonder of the world. I think everybody else besides Keynes has been attributed that compounding is the eighth wonder of the world.

A (17:39)

We'll give it to Einstein. Okay, so now explain to us Einstein or Buffett. That's true. So now explain to us the new strategies. What's the difference with Rocky and Rock Q?

D (17:49)

So Rocky is going to be a modestly active long portfolio benchmark to S&P 500 doing S&P 500 index options. Rock Q is going to be a modestly active long portfolio benchmark to the NASDAQ 100 doing NASDAQ options. And our goal would be to defer some of the taxes associated with that distribution. So one of the ways of thinking about it, if an investor would prefer to defer, they should kick the tires on Rocd and Rock Q instead of Jeffy and Jeff Q if they want 1099 income pay as you go, then Jeffy and Jeff Q. But there is one big point to your, to your question, Ben, and that is Jeffy is going to be that more defensive, higher quality portfolio, whereas Rocky is going to be something that looks a lot like the S&P 500.

A (18:38)

Okay, so you have like your, your sort of high quality Minvol with JE Blue chip and then more S and P and that. So you have like your, I guess, I don't know if it's volatility or risk levels, but you have your options now, options within options.

D (18:52)

Right. Basically we believe that adding a call of rights strategy to a portfolio manage enables you to have multiple ways of winning. Right. If you think about a call. Right. Strategy if markets go up, Michael said it best. When we start off the call, we're not going to be able to keep up, but you're still going to capture a healthy amount of risk adjusted return and I know, you know it's not about sharp ratio return but being up significant but with less risk. And then with you that's what we anticipate. You know better, you know better risk just returns to the upside, to the downside. Stock selection options premiums should help value out a little bit but in that range bound market, you're still going get the dividends and the options premium. So those strategies complement a well balanced portfolio. Carving out 5, 10, 15, 20% from a traditional balanced portfolio. The question that becomes do you want your income to be 1099 Coupon Jeffy Jeff Q Would you like it to be reinvested in, in a, in a pretty smart way? Joy T. Or do you like to potentially defer some of the taxes in a strategy like Rocky and Rock? Q so it is, it is what we're trying to give is choices around as to how you get those monthly distributions or not. In the case of Joy T. This

C (20:07)

is a very, this is a sort of a ridiculous question given the pun that you're fishing in, but the size of this ETF is considerable. It's over $40 billion and I would imagine based on the market environment that flows are accelerating. If I had to guess, there are some names in the portfolio that are not. Now it's a very diversified portfolio, so it's not cap weighted. It's not like, it's not like the S and P. You know, you've got the largest position as of this recording is 1.8% of the assets. So maybe this is a dumb question, but I'm too, it's too late. I'm talking about, I'm already down the road. Is there any worry about you guys getting too big about like, like is there any worry about the scale and you pushing around some of these underlying names, especially in the, at the option level, at the index level. I guess we covered that already. Never mind.

D (20:54)

I'm paranoid. I worry about everything. And what I would say is when you think about the well diversified nature of the portfolio with 1.8% being the cap, think about that relative to virtually any strategy in the industry that's benchmarked to the S&P 500 Ben that have big chunky weightings in so many different names, that diversification I think is a tailwind and a benefit from an options perspective. We did cover that, you know, over three and a half trillion notional per day.

C (21:22)

Yeah, I think you're good there. 2026, it's been an interesting year as, as they all are. Are you seeing flows accelerating?

D (21:30)

We have seen some, some flows into the entire suite. Jeffy and Jeff Q. Continue to see investors. I think a lot of that is there's multiple ways of winning. I, I love stocks. I've been a stock jockey my entire career and an option shock my entire career. But they're, they're blunt. Stocks go up, you make money. Stocks go down, you don't. When you put a strategy like this into your portfolio, there's multiple ways of winning. A strategy like Jeppy held its own in 2021. It held its own again in 2022, and this year it's doing what you would expect, hanging in pretty darn well. If we can help you, perhaps not eat all the downside. You don't need to make as much money when the market goes up. I know you guys talk a lot about investing for the long term. I believe investing for the long term. But one of the greatest ways of compounding wealth over time is losing less. And if we can help people stay invested and lose less over time, we think we're in a good spot.

A (22:28)

I was actually looking at this before we got on. It's kind of crazy to think since 2009, there's only been two down years on the S&P. 2018 was a bad year. It was down almost 20% and then that was 2022, and then 2018 was down like 4%. So we haven't really. Investors have had it a little too easy. Actually. We haven't had a lot of down years. You know, the first decade of the century was a lot of down years. But we have. This cycle has been relatively easy, even though there's been drawdowns along the way. So we haven't had many, many down years even for the options to protect against. So I guess you're set for that situation. I'm curious if I know it's hard to get look through on ETF investors. It's a little harder than mutual funds. But do you get the sense that the income in these strategies gives you a more consistent investor base? Do people buy and hold these funds more because they're receiving that regular income?

D (23:16)

I think that's part of it. I think the other part is that people witness days in which the market sells off and we hang in pretty well on most of them. That's number one. Number two, when I think about these strategies, Ben, going back to your first point, it's not meant to be one for one with the equity market. It's meant to be a portion of your equity and a portion of your fixed income. And if you think about a strategy like Jeffy as an example, if you take you know, $5 from stocks and $5 from bonds, it's not that I don't like bonds, but I'd rather own Jeffy and stocks than bonds. And this, these strategies help you be more efficient as far as your portfolio construction. So if you want to put me in a, a a head to head with stocks, with any of the, of my option or strategies, I would take stocks. Two things. One, the ride matters. I mean you brought up, you know, 2008 and you brought up 2022. I mean I'm old enough to remember the late 90s, the early 2000s, the GFC. There have been, I mean people forget the summer of 2011 when the US debt got downgraded. People freaked out when the market went down 14% in a two week period. Just because the year finished flat or up does not mean you have to look into the, into the abyss. I mean just think about it. Nothing happened last April. I bet you, you guys were both pretty darn busy last April because the S and P and the VIX were flat in April. So I think managing that ride, it's easy in the rearview mirror, a little harder as you live through it.

A (24:52)

You mentioned the like taking a little from stocks and a little from bonds. What's a fair way to benchmark these kinds of strategies? Is there an option benchmark that you use? Do you say? No, no, no. It's more like a 7030 portfolio or something like that. What do you think is a fair way for investors to benchmark against these strategies?

D (25:09)

I think the starting point is risk for risk. When I think about what you folks do, your goal is to maximize your clients returns using the risk that they have allocated to you. So if you're going to invest in these strategies, you're going to have to keep your clients portfolios risk risk the same. So I mean it's taking a little bit of stocks a little bit from bonds since each one has a slightly different risk profile. That's how I would think about it. There are some, some call overwrite indices. I say they're kind of imperfect. You know they do options once a month. They do at the money options in some cases. But I think the best way of thinking about this is if you're going to add something to your portfolio like anything else in life. Does it add value? Does it increase your total return? Does it increase your Sharpe ratio? Does it increase your up capture? Does it decrease your down capture. And if the answer to that is yes, then you're being very efficient in your client's risk budget, if you will. That's how I think about these type of strategies. They're not meant to replace your equities because they have less beta. They're not meant to replace your fixed income because they do have equity market beta. They're meant to complement your well established portfolio construction.

C (26:19)

So to me, that's where I wanted to go in terms of how advisors are thinking about this. Where it goes in the portfolio, this is obviously more like an equity than a bond. I would say that if you are using this as a fixed income substitute, you're going to have some really mad clients if and when there is an actual bear market. Would you agree?

D (26:37)

Without a doubt. Which is why when we think about this, we think about it as I said earlier, that risk for risk. Now there are some parts of fixed income that it is similar, not exact, but similar. Credit, emerging market debt, that that part of fixed income that actually has equity market beta, but it is not a bond. Substitute bonds are bonds and stocks are stocks. And from a risk perspective, these strategies sit somewhere in between the two.

A (27:04)

Michael, how do you see clients using these? Do you see, do you really see people say hey you know what, I'm going to take 5% from my bonds and 5% of my stocks. It's going to be an offset or something like that. Or do you see it as like, is it, is it almost like an alternative or a middle ground? Or are you saying no, people just have their expectations for what this can do and it's just floating in the portfolio. Like what's the portfolio management usage of this fund?

D (27:24)

I think there's three ways, Ben. We see people using the portfolio. Number one, as an anchor tenant for an income warranty client income is one of those things that's evergreen. People love income. And if you can actually start with a high quality group of stocks that are expected to have less risk and less beta and throw off a healthy amount of income, it's a good anchor tenant. Or if you have a client that said, I want to own something a little growthier and a little techier with a healthy amount of income and expected at less risk in beta, once again, that anchor tenant to an income oriented portfolio. And you guys know there are lots of people that build income focused portfolios. So we're seeing people use it as an income anchor tenant. We also see some people using it as a conservative equity. You know, with all that's going on in the world, all the uncertainty. These strategies are going to be equities but have less risk in beta. But one of the interesting things around this strategy is when volatility goes up, we're expected to give you more income and more potential upside. So volatility is a tailwind and you're seeing it today as volatility has reared its up ugly head. Our strategies should benefit looking forward. But when you look at a traditional portfolio, what happens when volatility is higher, spreads are probably wider and stocks are probably down. These strategies create a nice complement to those more challenging environments when the VIX goes up in your standard portfolio. And then lastly, we do see a lot of people taking their existing portfolio, peeling off some stocks and peeling off some bonds to buy these strategies. The question is how much in each? Well, it also depends upon your starting point. If you're very overweight equities, it'll be more equities than fixed income. If you're underweight equities, it'd be more fixed income and cash than equities. But if you're perfectly balanced, it's going to be that risk for risk that we talked about. And when you do that, you actually see the benefits of complementing a traditional asset allocation with strategies like this.

A (29:25)

All right, people who want to learn more about Jeppy or Jeff Q or your new funds, where do we send them?

D (29:29)

So if they want to learn more about Jeffy, Jeff Q, Rocky Rock Q or joy t. Jpmorganassetmanagement.com all right, thank you, Hamilton.

A (29:38)

Appreciate it, as always.

D (29:39)

Thanks for having me, guys. Appreciate it.

A (29:44)

Okay, thanks to Hamilton, as always. Remember, check out jpmorganassetmanagement.com to learn about all the funds we mentioned on the show today. Then email us animalspirits at thecompoundnews. Com. Personal emails, personal responses. We'll see you next time.