Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: J.P. Morgan's Covered Call Strategies

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

On today's show, Michael and Ben are joined by Hamilton Reiner, MD, PM, and Head of US Equity Derivatives at J.P. Morgan Asset Management to discuss: how JEPI is constructed, how volatility affects yi...eld, why JEPI has been so popular, 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 animalspiritspod@gmail.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://www.idontshop.com Past performance is not indicative of future results. The material discussed has been provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as legal or investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security or strategy. The investment strategy and themes discussed herein may be unsuitable for investors depending on their specific investment objectives and financial situation. Information obtained from third-party sources is believed to be reliable though its accuracy is not guaranteed.   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. Wealthcast Media, 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. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-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 JPMorgan Asset Management. Today we're talking about the JP Morgan Equity Premium Income ETF, ticker JEPI. If you want to learn more, check out all the links in the show notes and go to JPMorgan Asset Management 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 Riddholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only
Starting point is 00:00:33 and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Riddholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. The price of equity securities may fluctuate rapidly or unpredictably due to factors affecting
Starting point is 00:00:50 individual companies as well as changes in economic or political conditions. These price movements may result in loss of your investment. Investments in equity-linked notes are subject to liquidity risk, which may make ELN's difficult to sell in value. Lack of liquidity may also cause the value of an ELN to decline. Since ELNs are in note form, they are subject to certain debt securities risks,
Starting point is 00:01:10 such as credit or counterparty risk. Should the prices of the underlying instruments move in unexpected manner, the fund may not achieve the anticipated benefits of an investment in the ELN and may realize losses, which could be significant and could include the fund's entire principal investment. Welcome to Anno Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, we got this email from someone last year, kind of tongue and cheek, but I think that they, there was some truth into it. At what yield do you put all your money into ticker JEPI? At what yield do you put all your margin into JEPI? At what yield do you mortgage the home and
Starting point is 00:01:41 put all that money and margin on JPE. Was it Hamilton who sent that? This was an actual email we got at the end of 2022. Hamilton is the name of the portfolio manager that we had on the call. Yeah. JP Morgan equity premium income ETF, which I guess I should have known this, I didn't. This is the largest active ETF that there is by assets. It's almost $30 billion in assets. It's still relatively newly a couple of years old. It's a covered call strategy
Starting point is 00:02:05 that also invests in low volatility stocks and high quality stocks. And this thing has just been raking in the money. And a lot of people really like it for the fact that there's lower volatility in the market and it has a yield from the covered call options.
Starting point is 00:02:21 I wonder what percentage of people in this strategy are A, in or near retirement, B, actually using the income. I would say for the first part, if I had to guess, I'm going to say, again, I'm just completely making this up. 75% of the money in here is for people over the age of, say, 55. But I also bet you that a relatively small number of investors are actually taking the income and living off of it.
Starting point is 00:02:51 I think people, like psychologically, investors love the idea of. steady income, even if they're not using it, even if they're not spending it. And they mentioned that they pay the money out on a monthly basis. So it's like you're receiving, you're right, an income from your investment. But do you agree with my assessment? If you have to guess what percentage of people are using the monthly income for spending, do you think it's a small percentage? Probably a pretty decent amount. That just like having that and then I'm leaving the principal alone and I'm living off the income or whatever. Like I think a lot of people have that mindset. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:22 Okay. Because I would say a small number of people are using the income. Okay. You think it's just investors who like the strategy? I think it's investors. That makes sense. I'm guessing that there's a lot of advisors in this, too. So we talked to Hamilton, Reiner, who's a portfolio manager and helped create this strategy. And great talk. I think our analyst, Sean, said that he would have bought used paper from him. This is a very good, engaging conversation. Here's our talk with Hamilton.
Starting point is 00:03:52 We are joined today by Hamilton Reiner. Hamilton is an MDPM and head of U.S. equity derivatives at JPM Asset Management. Hamilton, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, guys. Truly appreciate it. We get a lot of questions at our inbox from people. Sometimes they're broad market base. Sometimes they're specific to a fund.
Starting point is 00:04:09 And I think the fund we've gotten the questions about most in the past 18 to 24 months is JEP, which is JPMorgan's covered call strategy, ETF. And there's a lot of people who love this strategy and want to learn more. so I think we're excited to have you on today. Maybe just give a broad overview of the strategy, how it was created, and kind of the process for stock selection and how the cold cover call thing works. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:04:35 So my background is 35 years of investing in equity and equity options. And when I first joined JP Morgan asset management, the idea was how can I actually do options in a delivery mechanism that can actually make it more widely used. So with JEPI, our goal was actually to try to find a way to do call overriding, but do it in a ETF so that the masses could actually invest in it. When I think about traditional call overriding strategies, oftentimes people work really, really hard to go out and find their favorite stocks
Starting point is 00:05:05 and then still calls on their favorite stocks, and they end up rooting against themselves where they're saying, I hope it goes up, but not too much. I mean, imagine thinking about that as an investor. Or you end up having your winners taken away from you and you're left with your losers. So when it comes to the call overriding component, we actually like selling options at the index level. That way we get to remove beta to get the income, but never have our stocks taken away from us.
Starting point is 00:05:31 Hamilton, can we explain the basics of a covered call? Let's say that somebody owns Apple. They own a lot of Apple. And for whatever reason, it could be a million reasons. They want to generate some income. They want that, you know, maybe they have a near-term bearish view, wherever the option the strike is at or the maturity. What are the mechanics behind a covered call? Just basics.
Starting point is 00:05:55 How does it work? So traditionally the way of a covered call strategy works is you own a stock and then you sell an option. And as you said, Michael, it could be because you'd sell some of that stock at a higher level anyways. You would feel like maybe it's dead money and you'd just feel like you can generate some income short term. But historically, you own an underlying stock or an index and then you sell it at the
Starting point is 00:06:20 money or out of the money option on that same stocker index. The challenge, though, is, as you folks know, everyone will sell a stock up 10% until it goes up 10%. And they're like, I never thought it would get there. And then they feel like, well, why did I sell this call? I need to buy it back. You end blocking a loss because oftentimes when you actually sell that out of the money call, it does create a tax event because if you deliver your shares, you now have a taxable event. So traditional co-operating is you own a security, you sell an option on that security, Michael. So the way that options are priced is one of the big components is volatility. I think this is one of the reasons that so many people like to do call options, sell call options on individual securities
Starting point is 00:07:06 because most or many securities, I guess, are more volatile than the market, meaning maybe they can pick up a little more money over selling those options on the market. But you do it against the market. So obviously, the stock market itself is never predictable, but does that make your income stream, little more predictable than it would be if you were doing it on individual securities? So the reason we do the index is because we think that there's value in our stock selection. And we never want to have our stocks taken away from us. And as you know, JEPB is expected through a cycle to give our investors seven to nine percent distributive income. And that's doing options on the index. Yes, if I did options on individual names, it could be more income, but the risk of having
Starting point is 00:07:44 those stocks taken away from us significantly outweighs that modest amount of income. And to be quite Frank, no one's ever really complained about 179% distributable income. So there's two components of the strategy. There's the income that you, that you receive from selling the calls. And then there's the active component. So we'll get to the, we'll get to the stock selection. But before you deal, I just want to spend another minute on the calls that you're selling. I assume that this is formulaic and that there's not too much discretion.
Starting point is 00:08:11 Or maybe I'm wrong. How does it work? Are you layering this out? Is it just you continue to roll? How does the option selling strategy? How did you work? So when I think about the approach we take from an options lens, there's a couple things that are part of my investing philosophy.
Starting point is 00:08:28 Number one, it's not just about income. It's about total return. So we always sell out of the money options, right? Oftentimes people sell an at the money option for going all the upside. We want to get balanced to our portfolio, some upside and some income. The other thing that I think is important is you need to have some type of flexibility based upon market environments. So if you always sold an at-the-money call or you always sold a 2% or 5% of the money
Starting point is 00:08:54 call, those are not always the same animals. I guess the word animals means a lot talking to you guys. But when I think about the market environments, a 2% of the money call is different if the ball is 16 versus 24 versus 32. So the approach that we take is we sell an option that has a 30% chance of finishing their money or a 30-D delta option. So when market volatility is average, let's call it that 16 to 18, we're going to actually sell calls about 2% of the money.
Starting point is 00:09:22 But when volatility is elevated like it was last year, we're selling calls that are three or even higher out of the money. And the options that we sell, Michael, are about just over a month in duration. But one of the historical challenges we call overriding strategies is you sell an option on July 1st. And then a week later, the market's up. Now what do you do? do you buy that option back locking a loss? Do you tell your investors there's no more upside for the next three weeks? Neither one of those are good outcomes. So what we do, we ladder and stagger our options, doing 20% of our options each and every week. That way, there's always more upside
Starting point is 00:09:59 to be had by our investors. We're never, ever capped out. Also, if volatility is a little bit higher next week, I get to take advantage of it. If it's lower, then it's a little bit of a headwin. But either way, this idea of laddering and staggering, as well as always selling options out of the money. And when options are out of the money, the idea here is we're going to give you some of the upside, some of the income. Too often people just focus on just the income. For us, it's about total return as well. So 2022 was good for, I don't want to assume anything. I assume stock selection. We'll get to that. But it was a good year for selling income for selling calls because there was volatility. 2023 is a much different, is much different environment. Even with this recent sell
Starting point is 00:10:36 off the VIX is, I don't know where it is today, 18 or so, it's still relatively low. So you have a systematic way of taking advantage of upside in call premium, should it materialize, but it's not like discretionary where you're going to wake up on Tuesday at 945 and say, no, you wake up at 945, but where you'll say, okay, now is the time, now is the time to sell it. It's more systematic than that. Absolutely. It's a very disciplined approach because the fact is you just don't know what the next move in the market's going to be. You may feel as though the market only is upside. Speak for yourself. I actually have a magic eight ball in my office and you want to borrow up, Michael. But the fact is, is that you don't know. So if you have a very disciplined
Starting point is 00:11:15 approach, it makes a strategy more predictable. As soon as you actually add that layer of unknown, strategies go from very investable to uninvestable. We think our discipline approach makes people be able to understand what to expect, why will outperform in certain reach environments, why we may underperform in certain environments. I think that expectations is good for people who aren't as familiar with the strategy. So I actually have a really good question here from one of our listeners. And I think this will kind of help set those expectations. So they say they have a decent size investment into JEPI. And they said it's been remarkable how little volatility JEPI has seen relative to the broader market while earning a pretty
Starting point is 00:11:50 fat yield. The only downsides I can detect so far is that it will get outperformed by the S&P if and when we are in a bull market. This was written in 2022, obviously. And the taxes on the yield are pretty nasty relative relative to regular dividends. I can handle both of those downsides for the money I have invested. That said, it feels a little rosy. What am I missing? What are your thought. So they're kind of asking, what are the tradeoffs for a strategy like this? And my thought would be that, yes, in a raging bull market, you're going to underperform in a bear market, you're going to do a little better. So it's a less volatile strategy. So maybe you could make some comments there based on this question. So, Ben, I'm really happy you brought volatility, because one of the
Starting point is 00:12:25 nice benefits you get of selling calls is not just the yield. You also have, it reduces volatility in beta. So a strategy like this is not expected to outperform the S&P 500 and not. market. How could it with 35% less volatility and beta in the market without leverage? Because I don't believe in leverage. So there's no leverage of my strategy. So that's the first thing. The second thing is the taxes. I'm not allowed to give tax advice. So there's my disclaimer. But when you think about it, our dividends in our long portfolio are going to be around 2%. And then the rest is going to be considered a coupon. Very similar to like any other fixed income product. I'm not sure if I'd call it nasty or rather what every other income-oriented product pays out.
Starting point is 00:13:09 Taxable. Except for munies. It's taxable. Exactly. Now, funny enough, during COVID, I was on a client call at home, and the client said to me, so this would be better than a qualified account. And I said, everything's better in a qualified account. And my daughter, who was 20 at the time, now she's 21 or 22, comes up to me and says,
Starting point is 00:13:29 Dad, it's like Frank's Red Hot. Put that stuff on everything. And so when it comes to taxes, you know, we want to make sure that we are as tax fish as we can be. We've never had a cap game distribution. We don't anticipate having one, but we can't promise anything. But as far as other things that you brought up, Ben, here's what I would say. There's three things that can happen with the market. Up a lot, down a lot, or flat-ish, up a little down, a little flat.
Starting point is 00:13:54 And in up market, we're not going to keep up. We can't. But even in the year like 2021, we're up 21 and changed with the market up 28 and changed. Not so bad with 35% of this volatility in beta. The market's down a lot. That more conservative, higher quality portfolio, plus our options premium, helps us eat less of the downside. But going back to the question from one of your listeners, what would be some other
Starting point is 00:14:18 challenging environments for the strategy? Number one, the VIX. Michael talked about it before. If the VIX is below 10 like it was in 2017, the income is going to be lower. Long term, we expect seven to nine. But if the VIX is below 10 like it was in 2017 for 50 of the 250 days, we're going to be below that long-term average of 7 to 9. Another challenging environment would be, what if it's a very narrow-based rally? Well, if it's a very narrow-based rally, we're going to be much more of a broad, long portfolio, capping every name at 2%.
Starting point is 00:14:50 Create that more diversified portfolio for many clients is a welcomed addition. Why? Because they have highly concentrated positions in their growth or their core portfolios. we give them a great diversification because we cap every name at 2%. And then lastly, when it comes to life, I'm a glass half full person. No getting around it. When it comes to investing, I'm absolutely a glass half empty. What could go wrong, not what could go right.
Starting point is 00:15:15 So we want to make sure that if and when the market goes down, that long portfolio hangs in a little better. So that higher quality portfolio, we cap every sector at 17.5%. So we're going to be structurally underway tech in that portfolio. And we could talk about Jeff Q at another time. If you really want tech, how you can combine it with that. But so if tech does all the heavy lifting of the market, the long portfolio could struggle a little bit. If it's a narrow-based rally, the long portfolio could struggle a little bit. But the income's still going to be pretty darn good.
Starting point is 00:15:44 And then lastly, if ball goes really, really, really low, the income's going to be a little bit lower than that long-term average of $7.29. Hamilton, one of the things that is evident in studying the market is that investors are risk averse. I think most investors have this mantra, even if they don't define it, they don't know it, they don't spell it out. It's in the back of their head, which is this. I'd rather be out and wish I was in than in and wish I was out, right? Like people are risk averse. And so I think that that is part of what is so attractive about the strategy is it allows you to be and if things go bad, it's not that you're going to avoid the downside, but it's going to be a little bit less, or depending on how, it'll be, it'll be less bad than the overall market,
Starting point is 00:16:30 generally speaking, no guarantees, of course, depending on how stock selection works. So the way I'm going with that is a long-winded way of saying, you launched this in 2020, and it went from zero to 28 and changed billion three and a half years later, for, something that is not, you know, purely, it's not passive at all, that's not an index-based product, that's, that's impressive. So what, I guess I just described it, but in your, in, in your estimation, what is it about this product that has really resonated with the market? I think the explainability, you don't need to get all the upside, but if you know that you're getting that income today, the second thing is, I'm from the Northeast, I grew up in Connecticut.
Starting point is 00:17:16 I still live in Connecticut. Income never goes out of style, like L. Bean Boots. They just does knock us out. Income always fits into people's portfolios. And then if you create that positive asymmetry, a little bit more of the upside relative to the downside, Michael, I think that actually also resonates. But one of the things that we've learned in my nearly 14 years of working in J.P. Morgan is if you work with advisors
Starting point is 00:17:41 and portfolio managers and CIOs and you help them understand not what you do, but rather how to use a strategy, it actually truly resonates. I think we've done a pretty good job of helping people understand how to use the strategy. The best analogy I'd give you is if I start talking to you about how people make the sausage, you may actually be forever afraid of eating it. But if I help you think about how to use it on an egg sandwich, in a sauce, on a pizza, and a stromboli, whatever, you're much more likely to find a way to use it.
Starting point is 00:18:13 So I think we've done a pretty good job helping investors understand how to use it. It's something that goes back as long as time as far as income and portfolios. On the income side of things, I totally agree with you that that's something that will always just resonate. And especially since we have this 70 million plus baby boomers retiring, some of them are already retired. Some of them are going to be retiring in the years ahead. That income and less volatility is going to be way more attractive. How often is the income paid out of this strategy? Because I'm sure people see that yield and they go, oh, my gosh, that's great.
Starting point is 00:18:43 I could live off something like that. How often is that income distributed to investors? We pay it out monthly, and every month, net of fees, we pay out 100% of our dividends and 100% of our options premium. Now, some people have asked us, Ben, why don't you, you know, bank some, save some for a rainy day. We don't believe in that. And the reason we don't believe in that is because if markets are more volatile and income is elevated, you've earned that with me because you've navigated this market, which is more
Starting point is 00:19:11 volatile, and your child's get a little bit above average income. So we actually just pay out 100% net of fees each and every month, Ben. Let's talk about the portfolio. What's behind the construction in terms of stock selection? Sure. So I'm very blessed to work at J4 and S management where we have a core fundamental research team. Over 21 analysts with over 20 years of experience. And what we do is a traditional, you know, discounted cash flow process, bottoms up,
Starting point is 00:19:39 not looking macro, just bottoms up, looking out to the medium to long term as far as stocks, that we find fundamentally attractive. However, once we actually find those stocks, we find fundamentally attractive, we look even deeper. We're looking for those stocks that have less price volatility and less earnings variability. Why?
Starting point is 00:19:59 As I highlighted before, it's not what could go right, but what could go wrong. When markets go down, these higher quality, more predictable earners tend to hang in better. I know I'm dating myself, but they're blue chip names.
Starting point is 00:20:11 Those are the type of names you want to own. In addition, the strategy is called equity premium income. So you would naturally think that we are naturally gravitated to dividends. We're not. Dividends do not come into the investment process. Over 10% of the portfolio does not pay a dividend. Why?
Starting point is 00:20:27 We want to own Google. We want to own Berkshire. We want to own great quality companies, regardless they pay a dividend or not. And therefore, those stocks, I wish I could say always, but don't always, but usually go down less than the market, when the market goes down. So that's why we choose this group of stocks to have these higher quality names that tend to hang in better when the market goes down. How often are the stocks changing the portfolio and what's the turnover look like? So the turnover of the portfolio is about 40% on the stock portfolio. It's about half name changes, just new names coming in and new names and old names going out.
Starting point is 00:21:06 And then the other half is much more a stock is down and we're adding a little bit to it or a stock is up and we're peeling a little bit back. But I would say every single day, when you think about forecasting future expected earnings and cash flows, your analysis of those stocks change. But because you're looking to the medium to long term, it doesn't just switch because the stock is up or down 2%. It's a longer term time horizon, which we're doing this analysis. Hamilton, you mentioned one of the risks of the strategy is a narrow market, which would be a risk to any strategy, right, for the most part.
Starting point is 00:21:40 So that's the environment that we're in this year. it's August, it's Friday, August 18th. The S&P 500 is up 15%. You know, we don't have to spend too much time on the Magnificent 7. Everybody knows the story there. And so the S&P's up 15. Jeppies, I'm looking at a total return, Jeffey's up five. But if you compare it to, let's say, RSP, which is the equal weight, it tracks. It's basically, let's see, it's, it's the same thing, 5.1 versus 5.1 for 5.1. But if you look at the price variability, this has had a much much smoother ride than an equal-weighted portfolio. This is part of the thing that attracts people to a strategy like this.
Starting point is 00:22:20 Absolutely. I mean, when you sell an option, you get all the credit for the income. You never get any credit for lowering volatility in beta. But to me, that's equally important, Michael, because that smoother ride helps folks stay invested. Now, given where we are today, to your point on the narrow-based rally, the fabulous seven or the magnificent seven, I mean, what if the other 490 names begin to work? wake up. What if the higher quality names that have been basically unloved this year but were
Starting point is 00:22:49 very loved last year begin to grow into their 2024 numbers? This strategy could do quite well in that environment or if we just muddle on through to year end because if I was on this podcast December 31st of last year and I'd say as you just said on August 18th, markets up 15% we would take it and say done, especially with all the strategist on CNBC and Fox business and Bloomberg TV, trying to scare the heck out of all of our clients. So if we're bringing both sides together of the stock picking and the covered call, a good way to describe this strategy would be the stock selection is lower volatility names, higher quality names, and then with a covered call overlay. That's kind of the whole strategy
Starting point is 00:23:35 if someone wanted to understand this in a 30-second elevator pitch. Absolutely. And the covered calls reduce beta, never takes our stocks away from us. The covered call actually generates some income, which is part of your total return, because I'm glad Michael just said, let me look at the total return of the strategy because with the income absolutely is part of your total return. Just because I'm giving it to you,
Starting point is 00:23:56 does not mean I don't get credit for it. I'd like to get a little bit of credit for it. And therefore, this strategy does give you that multi-prong approach to total return. You're going to get some dividends, some options premium, and then some of the upside. That three-prong approach to return
Starting point is 00:24:08 works quite nicely in most market environments. This is a, it looks like it's a roughly equal weight of portfolio. I'm guessing there's like, you know, it's not equal in the sense that they're all the same, but there's drift involved, right? The price to go up, price you go down, some get bigger, some get smaller. Maybe take a second and just talk about some of the resources that you have at JP Morgan to help you with the stock selection. Absolutely. So I told you we have 21 analysts and they're, they're incredible. The first thing I would say is they're not just analysts. What is the traditional role of an analyst? They knock on your door, Michael, and they say, you know what, I think you
Starting point is 00:24:40 should buy stock X, Y, Z. You buy it, it goes up, you guys high-five each other. It goes down. They hide from you for months because they don't want to have to face you for buying a stock that went down. Or you don't buy it and it goes up. And they're like, I told you so. Or something like that. Our analysts actually have real skin in the game. They actually are stock picker, stock selectors. They actually are part of running an analyst fund, a best idea analyst fund. So you see their conviction as to how they put their allocations and their money into their securities. So they're not just analysts who say, I told you so, or you should do this. They're actually putting their money and clients' money into their strongest and highest conviction
Starting point is 00:25:25 ideas. Number two, one of the nice things that has happened to active managers as passive has grown is it's easier to get time with managements, right? If assets used to be 80% active, 20% passive, now that it's 50-50, I have less people to compete with to get in front of management and talk to them. So when we have that type of approach
Starting point is 00:25:48 where we have these analysts that do deep analysis, they each cover between 25 and 35 names, they actually know the CEOs, the CFOs, the CFOs, the C-O's. In some cases, some of our analysts have been doing this for 20, 30, or even longer years, boards talk to them, CEOs talk to them about,
Starting point is 00:26:04 I'm thinking about bringing this person into my firm. What do you think? They're really being consultative to many of the firms that they cover. So it's definitely a competitive advantage for us, Michael. Hamilton, when it comes to the success of an ETF, some strategies are going to do well regardless because there's just always going to be demand for them. I agree with you that the income side of this, this strategy probably would have done well whenever it was released. But it came out, it looks like a little over three years ago. 2022 was a great year for this strategy. There was a Wall Street Journal article that talked about all the money going into cover call strategies. Jeppie was one of the funds that was
Starting point is 00:26:36 named. If I injected you with truth serum and when this thing was least three years ago and you looked back in it now, would you be surprised at how big the strategies? I think it has almost $30 billion in assets. Was this expected? How are you feeling personally for the success of the strategy in terms of bringing in assets? So, Ben, you don't need truth serum. Here's what I'll tell you. Anyone who can sit on this podcast or anywhere and said, I would expect a strategy in three and a half years to become the largest active ETF in the industry at over $28 billion, it's crazy.
Starting point is 00:27:09 Okay, see, I didn't know it was, so this is the largest active ETF strategy. Okay, maybe I didn't know that. Wow. In the world. Pretty remarkable. But what I did feel is, though, it had enough positive qualities
Starting point is 00:27:20 that people would want to put in their portfolios. If we can give people a portfolio, they would like or love, even without the options component. If you then on top of it can actually lower the ball and lower the bait of owning those type of names.
Starting point is 00:27:32 And then on top of that, you could throw off some income every month. We thought we had a chance of being successful. So I really felt the zone we launched it. It took my 30 plus years investing in equity and equity options
Starting point is 00:27:43 and tweaked it to truly try to find a way to eliminate what I would call some of the traditional headwinds around coal override strategies. Did I expect it to hit where it is today? No. Did I think it was going to be successful?
Starting point is 00:27:55 I did. Hamilton, like we said earlier, this is literally the number one ETF that we've been asked about over the year. So the fact that it's number one in its category is not too big of a surprise. We really appreciate you taking the time and explaining the Storytower listeners. So thank you.
Starting point is 00:28:13 Thanks for having me. I appreciate it, guys. See you at Future Proof. Oh, hell yeah. I didn't know you're going to be there. Fantastic. I'm going to be there. I can't wait.
Starting point is 00:28:22 Awesome. We'll see you there. Thanks again to Hamilton and JPM Organizant Management. Remember check our show notes for the links and email us, Annalpurespot at Jima.com.

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