Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: Investing in Securitization

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

On this episode of Animal Spirits: Talk Your Book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Micha...el Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by Mike Laughlin from Janus Henderson Investors to discuss: how securitization works, investing in CLOs, the size of the securitized market, how fixed income investing has changed and much more. Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠animalspirits@thecompoundnews.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://idontshop.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Janus Henderson Disclosure - Please consider the charges, risks, expenses and investment objectives carefully before investing. For a prospectus or, if available, a summary prospectus containing this and other information, please call Janus Henderson at ⁠800.525.3713⁠ or download the file from ⁠janushenderson.com/reports⁠. Read it carefully before you invest or send money. ETFs distributed by ALPS Distributors, Inc. ALPS is not affiliated with Janus Henderson or any of its subsidiaries. Janus Henderson® and any other trademarks used herein are trademarks of Janus Henderson Group plc or one of its subsidiaries. © Janus Henderson Group plc. Click on these links to view ⁠JAAA⁠ and ⁠JSI⁠ performance information and important disclosures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Animal Spirits Talk Your Book is brought to you by Janice Henderson investors. Go to JaniceHenderson.com to learn more about their whole suite of securitized ETFs, including J-Triple-A and JSI. That's Janicehenderson.com to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion, and do not. reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's
Starting point is 00:00:39 wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, I think you could make the case that this has been like one of the weirdest, probably the weirdest decade ever for fixed income. And it's been kind of a lightball moment for a lot of people. Yeah. Like, oh, I'm, I have to like expand my horizons here. Yeah. I got, people got smoked.
Starting point is 00:01:06 And we've talked to a lot of different fixed income products over the years on Tucker book. And I got to be honest, I, the, the CLO stuff is still, was still a little over my head in some ways. Because I feel like it is, it gets lumped in with CDOs.
Starting point is 00:01:22 He's like, I know what those are. Michael Lewis taught me, right? To cure tight stuff. I think it took a long time for people to maybe be more acclimated with this. And it seems like they are now very acclimated. So we talked to Michael Offlin.
Starting point is 00:01:32 Mike is an executive director and the ETF client product specialist for Janice Henderson, investors. And they have the biggest CLO ETF in the game, which, let's see. So JAA, JAA is the name. It's a Janice Henderson, AAA CLOETF. So as I can tell from Y charts, $27 billion under management. And this thing is not that. This thing has only been around since late 2020. That is a lot of money.
Starting point is 00:02:01 It's a massive, massive. Obviously, the timing could not have been better for them. Well, I think the story's clean. AAA rated. No defaults in the history of the asset class. 50 basis points spread over corporate bonds. Corporate bonds. Yep.
Starting point is 00:02:18 Very, very, very little volatility. If you look at the line on this chart is... Yeah, it's a smooth ride. So I get it. Yes. And to be honest, it's not very... easily understood. I asked Mike, why, why does this product deserve a spread over other types of bonds? Well, it's harder to understand. It's more complicated. It's the, it's the lack of understanding
Starting point is 00:02:41 premium. Yes, which makes sense me. So anyway, we talked all about J. AAA. We talked about JSI, which is their, they're securitized ETF, all this stuff and how securitization works. I think it's worth getting into like, this is a kind of conversation where it's worth getting into the weeds for because this stuff is not easy to understand. So here's our conversation. with Michael Offlin from Janice Henderson investors. Mike, welcome to the show. Great to be here. First time guest, long-time listener. Really excited.
Starting point is 00:03:11 Thank you for having me. All right. Well, appreciate that. We're excited as well because the Janice Henderson AAA CLO-ETF, ticker is J-A. It's Jay with three A's. J-T-A-T-A. We say J-T-A. Okay, there we go.
Starting point is 00:03:27 Correct me from wrong. This has got to be the biggest CLO E-T-F in the market, right? It is. Yeah, yeah, by a factor of a couple times. Yeah. Yeah. So you guys launched us in, I think, 2021, maybe like 2020. And it's like gotten vertical, the total assets in their management, $27 billion up from a base of, you know, zero, I guess, unless you converted it. So I don't think you did. Why is there so much money in this thing? What is it about the AAA CLO that investors find so damn attractive? So I think it's helpful to start by just unpacking the attributes. So if you're looking at J-Tripple today, it's roughly 5% yield. Since inception at the end of 2020, the volatility has been around 1%. It's floating rate, so there's no interest rate duration. And in the history of U.S. capital markets, there's never been a default in this asset class.
Starting point is 00:04:15 So 2008, 2020, 2022, period, full stop. There's never been a default in a AAA CLO. And so that overall combined set of attributes has been very attractive. You know, obviously right after or not too long after we launched it, the Fed engaged in sort of the fastest rate hiking cycle we've seen in a couple of generations. And so that put the yield at a very attractive level also. And advisors can just find a lot of uses for this in a portfolio, whether it's step out of cash earning more than a money market, whether it's rotating from other parts of fixed income where spreads are kind of tight today, or whether it's just trying to reduce sensitivity
Starting point is 00:04:54 to rates. We've seen advisors find many different use cases for that, you know, attractive attribute profile. I have a couple of follow-ups. So how long has this asset been in asset class? How long have CLO's been around for? They've been around for a few decades. Traditionally, this was a more institutional asset class. Oftentimes, insurance companies have been longtime big players in this. Banks have been big players in this asset class, but three decades or so. Let's stick at the high level before we drill into like what the hell is even a CLA and what's underneath the hood. I'm looking at the brochure that you guys have. And I'm looking at one of the charts you have is as compelling yield potential. And it says CLO is a trading 51 base
Starting point is 00:05:32 points over credit, to which I say, 51 basis points. What is this competitive yield for ants? I mean, that's not a lot. But to your point, to your point, this is a legitimate asset class that's been time tested. I think it gets a bad rap for the for the misunderstandings about it getting lumped up with a CDO squint and all that sort of stuff, which we could talk about. But if you look at the chart of of JAA, like the total return price, there is very, very little volatility. So even though you're, I'm sort of kidding here, only picking up 51 basis points, there's no, there's no, free, free, free, free lunch. But this looks pretty compelling. With where spreads are today, if you were looking at it versus call it like money market or other ultra shorts, you know,
Starting point is 00:06:12 you're getting about 130 basis points over money market today. I actually, last week, I pulled up the AAA corporate index in Bloomberg, which was spread to treasury of 35 basis points. So you're getting like 100 over AAA corpse. And even if you looked at triple B corps, again, as of last week in Bloomberg, you know, that was about. 95 over Treasury. So in this asset class, you own a AAA CLO and you out yield a triple B corporate bond or that index by call it, you know, 35 basis points. That's pretty attractive to your point with very, very low volatility. So we've made a bunch of comparisons to different areas of the bond market, credit and money markets and the ag or whatever. Like, what do you find this as a comparison to?
Starting point is 00:06:53 Because it's obviously, it sounds to me like it's floating rate debt, right? So the maturity is obviously relatively short. I would imagine like what's a good comp for this? Something else in the fixed income arena. What would be of this be a replacement for, I guess? Most commonly, other forms of ultra-short bond is, I think, the most common sourcing area or for folks who are looking to take that step out of cash. For a long time, we were in the Morningstar Ultra Short Bond category. Morningstar recently created securitized categories themselves. So now they broke out securitized as a, as different asset classes. So they moved us as part of that. But forever, we were part of the ultra-short category. And I think that's the first place that people look.
Starting point is 00:07:33 What does that maturity look like? There's no obviously like underlying interest rate duration. The legal maturity of a CLO and it might be helpful to like unpack, you know, exactly what a CLO is and how it functions can be anywhere from like 11 to 13 years. Typically they don't they don't live that long. A typical realized deal life might be, you know, seven or eight years. The underlying loans are typically five to seven-year loans. So it kind of depends exactly where in the structure we're talking there. But they act more short term because the rate's moving. Correct. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:07 So these are a spread product, but they're floating rate. And so the reason they have no interest duration is because there's the rate on these floats. And so every three months in January, April, July, and October, you get resets of the yield. All right. Let's see how good you are, Mr. Loughlin. what in God's name is a CLO? Yeah, so it stands for collateralized loan obligation. And so this is part of the broader securitized market, which sometimes that word can
Starting point is 00:08:40 have negative connotation when it really shouldn't. It just means to create a security. And so the underlying of a CLO, the underlying collateral is a senior secure bank loan to a U.S. company. If you actually own a floating rate mutual fund or a floating rate ETF, you own the same collateral. And in J-Tripple-A, our product, we only use the broadly syndicated loans. So we don't have any private credit-based CLOs in J-Tri-A. So these are broadly syndicated, senior secured bank loans to U.S. companies. Your clients would know, it's American Airlines,
Starting point is 00:09:14 Bass Pro Shops, right? Those are the types of companies that would be the loans that comprise the CLO. And just for reference, it's actually quite a large market. So the bank loan market in the U.S. is like $1.6 trillion, and about 70%, 70% of all CLOs today, or so excuse me, all bank loans today get packaged into CLOs, making the CLO market like around $1.1 trillion. So quite big. But a CLO issuer, not Janus, but there's about 140 firms in the U.S. that issue CLO today will take a pool of these corporate loans and securitize into a CLO. And when they do that, you'll have, imagine you have a billion dollars as your pool of collateral, your underlying loans, you'll end up with a stack. So you'll have a AAA tranche of that CLO, a AA, a single
Starting point is 00:10:02 a, a triple B, a double B, and an equity tranche. And so J. AAA specifically buys that equity tranche. But long answer to a short question, a CLO is a pool of securitized bank loans. So why would a corporation borrow this way as opposed to just issuing normal corporate debt? They may not be able to access the corporate bond market. They may have sort of more attractive financing in the bank loan market. There can be different reasons within their own capital structure that they may choose to go the loan route versus the high-yield bond route. When we say AAA credit quality, it's the structure that provides that credit quality.
Starting point is 00:10:47 The underlying loans themselves are no, again, no different. than what you would find in sort of a floating rate mutual fund or or ETF. They themselves are generally below investment grade loans. How does this differ from like the bank loan ETFs? Is this only taking the top slice in terms of like the least risky? So in a bank loan ETF, what you physically own is the loan itself. In J. AAA, you own a AAA bond of a CLO. And the difference there is Back to my example, imagine you took a billion dollars of corporate loans as your collateral pool. The AAA tranche would maybe be $650 million. So you're over collateralized by 35% just in the structure itself.
Starting point is 00:11:33 And that stack functions kind of like a waterfall in the sense that, again, you have a AAA, a double A, a single A. Well, within each CLO, the double A can't get paid one penny until the AAA gets paid in full. The single A can't get paid one penny until the triple and double A get paid in full. So returns flow down that waterfall and conversely losses flow up. If there are defaults coming from the underlying loans, they will be absorbed by those lower tranches first. And so you're over collateralized in the structure. There's subordination in the structure. And even if we go back to in the financial crisis, the peak corporate loan default rate we saw in 08 was around 14%. But again, in this structure in the AAA tranche, you're over collateralized by. 35%. It takes an extremely draconian scenario to break the structure of the CLO itself. So we get questions all the time in our inbox for people. And the last few years, a lot of them have been just about bonds. And I made the point before that a lot of investors woke up to the idea of, oh my gosh, it's been 40 years since we've had to think about higher inflation.
Starting point is 00:12:38 And so I think a lot of people woke up to the fact that like there are different parts of the fixed income market that react differently under these economic environments. Right. So obviously, a fund like yours where the rates are floating in very short duration, that can weather that kind of store, much better than a different type of fund. So obviously, maybe investors are thinking, I need to have some sort of inflation-like protection for this. Like, beyond that and the floating rate notes working well when rates go up, like, what's the sweet spot for this strategy working? Are you saying, well, the best case scenario is, yeah, rates rise and we pick up the yield pretty quickly and we don't have interest rate risk? What other scenarios
Starting point is 00:13:14 are good for this fund? I like to think about it in the terms of there's three reasons why you own fixed income. It's for the income. It's for capital preservation slash stability. And then it's for equity beta diversification. And I think you can really hammer those first two with this strategy. So to your point in an environment where you're getting rising rates, well, you don't have that duration drag and the yield is increasing.
Starting point is 00:13:36 That's great. But even in an environment of falling rates, you're still getting a great return per unit of risk in this asset class. And the rates here fall with a lag because the CLOs reset every three months, you can get a rate cut that doesn't feed through immediately to the CLOs. And you can pick up a little bit of additional yield in the meantime. And so we've seen interest in the product. I mean, certainly when the Fed did raise rates, that caused a lot of interest in the space. But especially now as money market rates are falling.
Starting point is 00:14:08 And I mean, you gentlemen are closer to the end client. we tend to hear that 4% on money market is kind of like a psychologically important level. And now you're seeing money market rates in the kind of mid-threes. We see a lot of crossover buyers, even as rates are coming down because folks want to capture that spread and still get back in the upper fours or five range. How do the mechanics of the ETF and the CLO work? Like money comes in, guessing on a daily basis, and it goes where? Yeah, so cash flows come in and this is an ETF, so we can take that in kind, so we can take
Starting point is 00:14:46 security CLO QSIPs in kind, or we can take in cash. As I mentioned, this is a much larger and deeper market than I think a lot of folks realize. It's a $1.1 trillion market. And so as money comes in, these are all QSips in the marketplace that our portfolio managers on J-Tri-A can add to the portfolio. It's really not that different from, you know, sort of any. other, you know, standard bond. So is a AAA CLO, a AAA CLO? Like, how much variation is there from one to the next? There can be some variation, especially in terms of the issuers themselves.
Starting point is 00:15:22 So I mentioned there's about 140 firms in the U.S. that have issued CLOs or that currently issued CLOs. Some have very long track records have been, track records have been doing this for a very long time and have very large AUM bases. Some are newer entrants. some are newer players into the market. And so there can be quality differences associated with the issuers of the CLOs. There can be differences in terms of non-call periods.
Starting point is 00:15:49 There can be differences in terms of reinvestment periods. So some of like the technical attributes of the underlying CLOs themselves. So they're not completely uniform in that way. And those are some of the things that are, this is an actively managed product. It's not, we're not tracking a passive index here. Those are the sorts of attributes that we manage. So when you say there's 140 CLO issuers, just so Ben understands clearly, is Janice an issuer or are you a manager or somewhere in between? No, CLO issuers would be like a KKR, a Carlisle, and Apollo, those sorts of firms.
Starting point is 00:16:23 They're the ones taking a pool of loans, packaging it, securitizing into a CLO. J. AAA, RETF, buys the AAA bond of that CLA. All right. So I'm glad you mentioned those names because in the news is probably, private credit and the concerns about the outflows and the software exposure and CLOs are getting lump in there a little bit. Can you give us some, like what are some of the things you see out there and you're like, this person clearly has no idea what they're talking about? So when it comes to software, it's, you know, it is a meaningful chunk of the overall loan market,
Starting point is 00:16:59 15 to 20 percent of the overall loan market. In J-Triplea, that's true as well, right, given sort of our size, we do have some exposure to those loans. But I think the main point is you don't actually own a software loan. You own the AAA bond of a CLO that is comprised of hundreds of different loans from dozens of different industries at any point in time. Talk about that a little bit more. I think that is like one of the key concepts. It might be helpful to use. There was an example last summer. If you were familiar with a firm called First Brands, it went bankrupts over the summer. They were an auto parts supplier made a lot of headlines.
Starting point is 00:17:39 So if you owned a first brand loan and like a bank loan mutual fund and they go bankrupt or they defaults, right? You own the loan. You're impaired on that loan. In J.TrippleA, we own four or 500 different CLOs, each that own three or 400 different loans from two or three dozen industries. So even in a scenario where first brands, which was a pretty big issuer in the loan market, goes bankrupt. you are not only diversified across, you know, hundreds, tens of thousands of loans, but then you're protected by the structure itself because you have all that subordination below you that is absorbing those losses. So these are AAA rated. They're securitized.
Starting point is 00:18:24 Why is there a spread over corporates? What's the, what's the, because the risk and reward thing have to be attached somehow. So why is there a higher yield in these assets? So I think partially it comes, they are more complex. There is, sort of more modeling that has to be done when you're managing these assets. Also, I think it's just a less trafficked part of the market, right? When you look at what are the broad benchmarks that everybody is using? You know, if you're talking about the ag, the ag is Treasury's corporate bond and agency mortgages. If you expand it to the universal, you add high yield, you had dollar denominated non-U.S. debt. But the CLOs are not part of any of these major benchmarks. They
Starting point is 00:19:01 tend to be very under allocated to in most portfolios, certainly most wealth portfolios. I think it's a combination of additional complexity and just in general not being an asset class that prior to, let's say, the ETF wrapper coming along and JAA coming along, was open to enough investors to compress that spread all the way. Setting aside the fact that like rates could fall, the Fed could keep lowering rates and that, you know, maybe the yield would fall on this and these secured it. Like, what is the big risk? Like, what would it just be a mass? a financial crisis, I would have to really ding these. Like, when would this fund like this actually get in some sort of credit trouble?
Starting point is 00:19:38 Yeah. So it is a spread instrument and spreads can widen. And so the main risk environment is when you would get sort of what I would describe as, you know, hardcore spread widening and liquidity crunch combined. And this actually happened during COVID. So if we go back to March of 2020, there is an index from JPMorgan, a AAA CLO index. And for the month of March 2020, it was down 5% in that single month. I mean, that's a period where we physically turned the economy off.
Starting point is 00:20:08 Now, you got most of that back in April and May. And actually, it was when our portfolio managers were looking at the asset class and putting it into an ETF wrapper. It was the trading through March and April of COVID that gave us the confidence that we could do this in an ETF because you could still trade AAA CLOs during that time. period. But that's the, that's kind of the risk that you bear. Outside of March of 2020, it's pretty rare to get even more than a 1% monthly drawdown. The last negative month that we had was Silicon Valley Bank three years ago, and it was, you know, down 10 basis points
Starting point is 00:20:46 that month. But in general, the risk where that volatility comes from is the potential for spread widening. Right. So it's more like investors freaking out about liquidity, which is what happened during COVID, as he said, to all types of spread products, right? It wasn't just these. It was corporate bonds. It was high yield. Everything blew out. Exactly. I mean, the days that the, CLOs were down, like I said, for the month, 5%. You had days there where the market was opening limit down, limit down, limit down, right? So it's market-wide risk premium blew out. And this is a very safe part of the market, but that was the drawdown during that period, which is, again, by far the worst that we've seen. Let's talk about another area of the securitized market where you guys,
Starting point is 00:21:26 where you guys are, invest, play, is, I don't know, I'm struggling here. JSI, the securitized income ETF. So this is a more diverse portfolio, invest in an asset-backed securities, commercial mortgage-backed securities, CLOs are in there, mortgage credit agency MBS, and a slice of opportunistic investments. This is similar but different. What's the story here? Broader.
Starting point is 00:21:52 So the securitized market in the U.S. is agency mortgages, non-agency mortgages, commercial mortgages, asset-backed securities, which would be residential, consumer and commercial, and then CLOs. So those are the kind of the five subcategories of the securitized market in the U.S. JSI invests across all of those. And similar to what we were talking about, you know, these are typically under-allocated two parts of the market. We find a lot of compelling and interesting opportunities in areas like asset-backed securities or like non-agency mortgages. specifically we love home equity loans at the moment in that portfolio. What do you like about those?
Starting point is 00:22:31 A lot of folks bought their homes in the early 2010s and between the home price appreciation, often 50 to 100 percent and then the amortization of that loan. The loan to value on that mortgage might be 35 or 40, but everybody refinanced their mortgage rates during COVID so they can't do a cash out refi and they can't move. They're locked in at like two and a half, three percent. And so the fastest growing part of the non-agency market today is actually home equity loans. We'll probably issue about $30 billion in the U.S. And so when we look at that market, we say, here's a borrower profile of, you know, owner-occupied, single, detached family home.
Starting point is 00:23:06 Typically, these are prime borrowers. And the rates on that second mortgage, so they're taking equity out of the home to remodel their kitchen, to buy a boat, whatever they're doing. The rates on that second mortgage are typically 8 to 10 percent. And so we think that's a really attractive borrower and rate profile in the securitized market. Yeah, the borrower profile for that has probably never been better. Like you said, it was higher credit scores. They refinanced at really low rates. There's a ton of equity in there.
Starting point is 00:23:35 The amount of that home prices would have to fall for that for them to be in trouble would be enormous. Like, it's probably never been better than that. Exactly. And so there are a lot of very compelling opportunities in broader securitize. Another one, so in the asset backspace, we actually have a music royalty position in the portfolio today. There's a lot of musicians that are essentially selling their catalogs. And as songs are played, they generate a royalty stream or cash flow. That cash flow can be securitized.
Starting point is 00:24:03 So we have one today that's backed by Shakira, Chili Pepper's Journey. And then we appreciate Michael supports the fund because the other main artist is Justin Bieber. And so we get essentially every time their songs are played, there's a royalty stream that pays into that cash flow and we own a piece of that. That's just a different example of a part of the securitized market that we think can be pretty compelling and is differentiated relative to just a standard corporate bond. How often does do the allocations in that fund switch between having great opportunities in certain place, try to keep it close to some sort of benchmark? weights or does it shift around a lot? No, it can shift depending on the market and depending on what's happening in some of the sub-sectors. Today, we really like parts of the asset back market. We like parts of the commercial mortgage market as well, but those allocations have drifted
Starting point is 00:25:00 through time. And so we have the flexibility. From a product strategy standpoint, JSI is due securitized for me. And then we also have ETFs that basically stack off against each of those underlying subsectors of securitize for people that want to be sort of more precise in their exposures. But JSI will manage across all of those. Where are you guys allocated to in the commercial real estate space? Everyone thinks it's like office space in downtown San Francisco, but it is, it can be a lot broader than that. Everything that we do in the commercial space is first and foremost single asset, single
Starting point is 00:25:35 borrower. So we don't do very much in terms of conduit deals. We have liked areas of the high-end hospitality market. We also have been in the data centers and cell towers and part of the market as well. Warehouses. So it is a much broader market than just, you know, office space. But even within office, we own a building in Hudson Yards. When I say we own, we own a portion of the commercial market debt in Hudson Yards, the MetLife building above Grand Central. So sort of the trophy properties where today it's something like 10% of the buildings or 60% of the vacancies in the office
Starting point is 00:26:12 space. So it's quite a bifurcated market. And we can play the, you know, the upper end of that. How do you handle the education piece for these kind of loans? And you mentioned they're more complex. That's, that's pretty obvious. When we're dealing with like financial advisors who might not have much of a debt background, like how do you handle that education piece for them and what is obviously a harder market to understand than the other parts of the bond market? So first and foremost, it's leading with the attributes. So again, 5% yield today, 1% volatility, floating rate and no defaults in the history of the asset class. And I think that gets people's attention and say, okay, help me understand and unpack this. The second, it goes, and I think Michael mentioned
Starting point is 00:26:52 CDO squared and sort of it's the education relative to 2008 and the negative connotation around, you know, the word like securitized, right? And everyone sort of immediately wants to go to ninja loans, right? Like no asset, no job, no no income mortgages. And the underlying pool, of what I owned was was not sound. So the second layer of education is just the underlying collateral is a bank loan senior secured
Starting point is 00:27:22 to a U.S. company, broadly syndicated bank loan. So as long as you're comfortable lending to the U.S. corporate sector, which most people are, oftentimes advisors will have a floating rate or a loan ETF position. And you could say, hey,
Starting point is 00:27:37 this is the same underlying collateral. It's just by securitizing, it, we've changed the structure such that, you know, you can get some subordination, you can get some over collateralization, you can get some protection. So, Mike, I understand the, even though the 50 basis points pick up in the triple A's is not that much, you're getting so with 1% standard deviation or volatility, like very, very little downside risk there. Not financial advice.
Starting point is 00:28:06 What about for people that want to take a little bit of a bigger swing? Anything else? Yeah, so we do have ETFs that invest across the entirety of the CLO stack. So we just launched J single A, which invests in the single and double A portion. And then we also have J triple D, which invests in the triple B portion. How much riskier is that? Is it like linear or exponential? I wouldn't say it's linear.
Starting point is 00:28:35 If in J.A, you're over collateralized by about 35%. in J-Triple-B, you're over-collateralized by 10 to 12 percent. You know, in realized volatility terms, J-Tri-B has had a vol in like the three range since inception. So it is more. I think if you get into a downside period, though, you know, you could see, you should, you can see greater drawdown in that part of the market. Just how much over-collateralization you have in the structure. Okay. And then, like you said, expect a little more volatility in those funds as well. Yeah, correct. The drawdown in J-TripleB or the realized volatility in J-TripleB, like I said, has been about 3%. So 3.5%. So a little bit higher.
Starting point is 00:29:21 Mike, for advisors that are listening that want to learn more or investors, how do they find you guys? So our website, Janice Henderson.com, is the first place to start. I would certainly take a look at J-Triplea. As you mentioned, it's been one of the most successful fastest growing. ATFs in the industry. We're really proud to offer it. There's a lot of great education that exists on the website, but then also, you know, getting in touch with us. We're always happy to double-click on any part of this. Awesome. All right, Mike. Appreciate the time. Thanks. Thanks to Mike. Did great. Check out Janicehenderson.com to learn more and email us, animals periods at the compound news.com. Please consider the charges, risks, expenses, and investment objectives carefully before investing.
Starting point is 00:30:11 perspectiveus or, if available, a summary prospectus containing this and other information, please call Janice Henderson at 800, 525-3713, or download the file from Janicehenderson.com forward slash reports. Read it carefully before you invest or send money. ETFs distributed by ALPS Distributors Incorporated. ALPS is not affiliated with Janice Henderson or any of its subsidiaries. Janice Henderson and any other trademarks use herein are trademarks of Janice Henderson Group, PLC, or one of its subsidiaries. Copyright Janice Henderson Group PLC.

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