QAV America 009 — Blame It on the Boogie

In this episode of QAV Amer­i­ca, Cameron and Tony dis­sect the sur­pris­ing fun­da­men­tals of Jack­son Finan­cial (NYSE: JXN) — a life insur­ance and annu­ities com­pa­ny that’s qui­et­ly throw­ing off “truck­loads of cash” despite con­fus­ing account­ing quirks. Cameron explores the company’s back­sto­ry (strange­ly has noth­ing to do with the Jack­son 5), explains its spin-off from Pru­den­tial, and strug­gles to under­stand how inter­est rates and rein­sur­ance affect its bot­tom line. Tony weighs in on debt man­age­ment, actu­ar­i­al com­plex­i­ty, and where annu­ity prod­ucts fit in the spec­trum of retire­ment options. They also touch on the con­tro­ver­sial new U.S. tax on for­eign investors (with impli­ca­tions for Aussie super funds), and deliv­er a per­for­mance update on the QAV U.S. port­fo­lio — up a stag­ger­ing 54% since incep­tion. This episode is nerdy, weird, and fun­ny as hell.