The JP Morgan Equity Premium ETF (symbol: JEPI) is one of the largest covered call exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the market and is quite popular with retail investors. JEPI employs a covered call strategy, which attempts to generate income by selling the upside potential of its portfolio. While covered calls may make sense in certain situations, my observation is that individual investors do not typically fully understand the dynamics of the strategy or the trade-offs in terms of risk and return. Hopefully, the below can help investors evaluate whether JEPI is a good investment for their portfolio.
A quick reminder that this site does NOT provide investment recommendations. Fund reviews (such as this one) are for educational purposes only and are not advice or recommendations.
The Short Answer
JEPI may be a good tool in very specific situations, but JEPI is not a good investment for many other situations. Covered call strategies (including JEPI) carry a specific and well-known set of tradeoffs that many investors do not necessarily fully understand or consider the implications. I would not recommend JEPI to most investors.
JEPI Performance
The first thing most investors want to know about is performance, so we will start there. According to Bloomberg, since the fund’s inception in mid 2020, JEPI has returned 13.32% per year which is below the S&P 500’s performance of 16.65% over the same time period.
As the JEPI chart of historical performance below shows, JEPI underperformed the S&P 500 in 2020 and 2021. Then JEPI outperformed in 2022, when equity markets experienced a lot of volatility, but began to underperform again in 2022. This is not surprising and exactly what I would expect from a covered call fund as the strategy is to sell upside potential in exchange for cash which helps offset downside losses. So I would expect JEPI to underperform when equity markets are doing well, outperform when equities are volatile, and generally underperform over longer time horizons (especially on an after-tax basis).
In terms of risk and drawdowns, JEPI’s downside has been more limited (as has its upside though). The peak-to-trough decline of the S&P 500 total return in 2022 was roughly 23% while JEPI’s total return was down only 13.6%. That being said, the S&P’s prior outperformance meant that its larger decline only brought the total return down to JEPI’s. My view is that writing covered calls does not provide that much (if any) downside protection because of the general underperformance relative to the underlying. This is not necessarily intrinsically good or bad, but investors should be aware.
JEPI Risks
JEPI owns stocks which are more volatile than cash or bonds. While the returns are higher than cash or bonds, investors need to be prepared to stomach volatility and be able to hold for the longer-term. JEPI was down over 13% at one point in 2022. This is not necessarily worse than other similar funds, but it is a characteristic of stocks that investors need to be aware of.
JEPI Portfolio
Fund performance is ultimately driven by a fund’s holdings and exposures, so our JEPI review will examine these items.
JEPI Holdings
JEPI (and its underlying index) is relatively well diversified, holding over 100 stocks. This represents the large-cap segment of the US stock market.
| JEPI | S&P 500 | |
| Number of Stocks | 136 | 503 |
JEPI Country Exposures
JEPI only owns US-based companies. Investors looking for international exposure may pair JEPI with international ETFs or simply hold a global ETF.
JEPI Market Cap Exposure
JEPI is primarily a large-cap fund which seeks to represent the largest US stocks. Even though the fund holds some mid-caps, performance is primarily driven by the large-cap exposure.
| JEPI | |
| Large-Cap | 82% |
| Mid-Cap | 17% |
| Small-Cap | 0% |
JEPI Sector Exposures
JEPI is extremely diversified across sectors and mirrors the approximate weights of the broad US stock market.
| JEPI | |
| Basic Materials | 3.86% |
| Consumer Cyclical | 9.07% |
| Financial Services | 12.22% |
| Real Estate | 3.70% |
| Communication Services | 5.27% |
| Energy | 2.95% |
| Industrials | 13.58% |
| Technology | 17.57% |
| Consumer Defensive | 12.85% |
| Healthcare | 13.58% |
| Utilities | 5.36% |
Expenses
No review of JEPI would be complete without an in-depth look at the explicit and implicit costs of trading and holding JEPI.
JEPI Expense Ratio
JEPI’s expense ratio of .35% is quite a bit higher than most domestic index ETFs, but this is to be expected for a more active strategy. Also, although it’s 10x the cost of a plain vanilla index fund, its only 30-35 basis points.
JEPI Transaction Costs
ETFs are free to trade at many brokers and custodians, so JEPI should be free to trade in most cases. Additionally, it is among the largest ETFs and is very liquid. The bid-ask spread of JEPI is about .02%, so individual investor trades will not generally be large enough to impact or move the market.
JEPI Tax Efficiency
JEPI is not very tax-efficient as the premiums received from selling calls are taxed at ordinary income rates. While some investors may not mind receiving income in lieu of potential upside, this is akin to converting capital gains (from appreciation) into ordinary income. Of course, a covered call strategy will lose less money if the market declines, but covered call strategies (including JEPI) have a large tax drag.
ETFs are typically more tax-efficient than mutual funds, due to their ability to avoid realizing capital gains through like-kind redemptions (a process that is beyond the scope of this post). This is true of JEPI as well, since it has not made any capital gains distributions to date. However, I would not necessarily say that the fund is tax efficient since covered call strategies essentially convert capital gains into ordinary income.
JEPI Premium Costs
Many retail investors focus on the premiums that are received from selling calls. However, investment returns need to calculated net of costs. If an investor sells a call for $3 and buys it back for $1, the return is $2 rather than $3. Of course, if the underlying stock goes up, an investor may have to buy the call back at $5 (as an example). Premium costs vary over time, so investors may want to evaluate total return rather than just premiums received.
JEPI Review: A Recap
The above review of JEPI illustrates that JEPI is a typical covered call strategy. It gained quite a bit of popularity and assets during the bear market of 2022, but covered call strategies are not for everyone (including yours truly). I would not personally invest in JEPI nor would I recommend it to anyone else, unless they fully understand covered calls and the performance and tax implications.
