Corporate Bonds

We consider the relative merits of four different fixed income investments in the current economic environment: 2-year Treasuries, 10-year Treasuries, Baa-rated corporate bonds and current coupon Agency MBS.

The ECB is now firmly in easing mode, even if it refuses to pre-commit to a specific rate path. What does this data dependency mean for the euro and European yields?

Our Portfolio Allocation Summary for June 2024.

Nonfinancial corporate balance sheets are generally in good shape, but there are signs of deterioration at the bottom-end of the credit spectrum. We present evidence showing that credit deterioration at the bottom-end of the credit spectrum has a habit of migrating upwards.

We are positive Private Credit but currently underweight Public BDCs. Today’s market pricing and sentiment in BDCs are excessively optimistic. Long-term investors should await a better entry point. Traders may find an attractive short. This report also peels back the Public BDC onion and presents over/underweights across individual BDCs via our filtering methodology.

Also included at the end of this report is an updated presentation titled 'Private Credit: Drivers Of The Boom And Understanding Risks On The Horizon,' recently presented at GII’s Private Credit Roundtable in Australia. It features updated charts and additional analysis.

Our Portfolio Allocation Summary for May 2024.

Central banks are in a dilemma whether to prioritize supporting growth or bringing inflation back to target. This is unlikely to end well. Investors should be defensively positioned.

In this report, we present our quarterly review of our Model Bond Portfolio. The anti-growth bias of the portfolio allocations hurt the portfolio performance in Q1/2024 as global growth surprised to the upside. However, we anticipate some recovery of the underperformance in our base case scenario for the next six months.