Animal Spirits Podcast

They dig into how a handful of mega-cap stocks have driven index moves and why value briefly outperformed growth. Conversation touches on why people with rising incomes still do not feel wealthy and the strange psychology around the $1M mark. They also talk about gas price effects, aging U.S. housing, Airbnb’s role in travel, and shifts in food delivery market share.

Kevin Liniak, Managing Director at Morgan Stanley, is a specialist in preferred securities and ETF strategies. He talks about why preferreds matter for income investors. He explains their hybrid risk profile, tax-favored dividend treatment, and why firms issue them. He also outlines active management and the Eaton Vance Preferred Securities and Income ETF (EVPF).

They debate whether recent market weakness is an orderly sell-off or recession signal. They cover sector concentration, tech multiple compression, and AI-driven capex changes. Wealth concentration, housing hidden costs, and private credit liquidity risks get attention. Trading behavior, rare down years, and cautious bottom-fishing strategies are also discussed.

Stephanie LaRosiliere, Head of Business Strategy and Development at Invesco and fixed income specialist. She breaks down how to diversify bond exposure, compares public versus private credit, and explains why ultra-short funds, floating-rate and active ETFs matter. She also discusses rate volatility, AI’s role in credit risk, and which sectors to watch in a downturn.

A wide-ranging market conversation on how prices sway geopolitics and why stocks keep defying expectations. They tackle oil, inflation, rising bond yields, and gold's sharp drop. Listeners hear takes on AI increasing work, housing weakness and accidental landlords, concentrated winners like NVIDIA, private credit risks, and pop culture picks including a surprise blockbuster.

Krista Lynch, SVP of ETF Capital Markets at Grayscale, who leads crypto ETF and product innovation. She discusses ETFs and in-kind creations. They explore stablecoins as rails and tokenization momentum. The conversation covers staking trade-offs, infrastructure over consumer apps, and how market maturity and regulation are reshaping crypto access.

A lively discussion about why oil prices stay muted despite geopolitical risk and how energy stocks became a retail meme. They debate market complacency, AI’s real-world productivity use cases and whether agentic AI implies a bubble. Other topics include Taiwan’s chip-driven GDP surge, improving housing affordability, private credit redemption risks, and changing retail spending patterns like DoorDash and Dick’s.

Erkko Etula, CEO and CIO of Brooklyn Investment Group, builds tech-powered, tax-aware long/short SMA strategies. He discusses the firm’s post-acquisition scaling, the origin and mechanics of tax-advantaged long/short overlays, advisor use cases like concentrated positions, and how leverage, risk systems, and de-leveraging affect tax loss harvesting.

Phil Huber, Head of Portfolio Solutions at Cliffwater and private credit specialist, and Michael Kitces, financial planner and advisor-tech thought leader, join live from Miami. They debate AI’s threat to advisors and why clients still delegate complex decisions. They unpack private credit headlines, defaults, lender quality, liquidity management and why current stress looks risky but not catastrophic.

Chris Galipeau, investment strategist at Franklin Templeton known for market research and newsletters. He discusses a broadening market leadership beyond tech. Topics include why earnings breadth is widening, software and AI repricing risks, how to separate durable software names from hype, and the case for international equities and potential catalysts for rotation.