Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson host a two-part Animal Spirits episode featuring Bill Mann, Chief Investment Strategist at Motley Fool Asset Management, and Kevin Liniak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley. The show explores two underallocated income strategies in today's market environment.

Bill Mann discusses the Motley Fool Momentum Factory ETF (MFMO), explaining why momentum strategies receive far less allocation than value despite being 'two sides of the same coin.' He describes momentum as a behavioral factor that captures market overreactions and underreactions systematically.

Kevin Liniak covers the new Eaton Vance Preferred Securities and Income ETF (EVPF), breaking down the hybrid nature of preferred securities and their role in income portfolios. The conversation also addresses current risks in private credit markets and the broader fixed income landscape.

Momentum as Market Behavior Arbitrage

Bill Mann describes momentum as 'cheating off the market's paper' - a systematic way to capture alpha from market participants who underreact, overreact, or overreact too late to information.

The strategy uses Motley Fool's quality screen as the top of the funnel, then applies momentum factors to companies that already demonstrate long-term free cash flow generation and growth.

MFMO recalculates monthly but rebalances quarterly, targeting 50% annual turnover with a 4.8% position size ceiling to prevent excessive concentration.

In market washouts like February 2009, the strategy would own 'the least negative momentum' stocks since it's long-only and must hold something.

Bill Mann references The Greatest Day, his paper about newspaper stocks having their best trading day ever while in terminal decline, illustrating how markets trade on '1.7 derivative to fundamentals.'

Preferred Securities: The Hybrid Income Solution

Preferred securities pay qualified dividend income taxed at capital gains rates rather than ordinary income rates, significantly boosting after-tax yields for investors.

Banks can issue up to 1.5% of risk-weighted assets in preferreds and have them count as equity for post-Dodd-Frank regulatory requirements, creating regulatory arbitrage.

Utility companies issued $25 billion in preferreds last year to fund massive capex needs, offering investment-grade securities yielding north of 6%.

Institutional preferreds feature fixed-to-floating rate structures that reset off the five-year treasury, providing unique inflation protection not found in traditional fixed income.

Many retail preferreds issued at 4% during the low-rate environment now trade at 70-80 cents on the dollar and 'will never see par again' - Kevin Liniak.

Private Credit Reality Check: Risks Without Systemic Panic

Private credit outflows above 5% have triggered gates, but Kevin Liniak argues this represents legitimate risk management rather than systemic crisis.

Software exposure represents 25% of some BDC portfolios, creating concentrated risk as AI tools like Claude and OpenAI disrupt recurring revenue assumptions.

Banks lending to private credit firms is 'much safer than lending to the menu directly' and would require 'complete Armageddon' to create bank risk - Kevin Liniak.

The floating-rate nature of private credit became less attractive as rate cuts began, with 175 basis points of cuts reducing yields on these assets.

Post-Dodd-Frank regulations made bank lending expensive, pushing credit into the 'shadow banking system' where it's held by unlevered private credit firms rather than 10-12x levered banks.