Fixed Income and Treasury - Articles & White Papers

As a part of its 9th annual US ETF Study, Greenwich Associates interviewed 181 institutional investors on the utility of ETFs for portfolio construction purposes, finding that ETFs are now considered as a primary means of obtaining fixed income exposures within institutional portfolios. Liquidity, ease of use, speed of…

Cashflow matching strategies are customised investment solutions, designed to enable clients such as pension schemes or insurance companies to meet their liabilities. LGIM believes that emerging market fixed income has an important role to play in designing cashflow matching solutions.

James Montier, of GMO, attempts to debunk recent characterizations of Modern Monetary Theory brought forth by Ken Rogoff, Paul Krugman, Larry Summers, and several others.

China’s large bond market is poised for rapid growth as the country opens its doors more widely to foreign investors. With the ongoing search for yield, the opening of a deep and liquid bond market offering the potential for positive real yields looks attractive, especially with the prospect of sizeable inflows following…

Authored by Lior Jassur of MFS Investments, this paper charts the rise of corporate borrowing in the US and Europe against the backdrop of broader trends in credit. It also analyzes some of the key investment considerations: debt service, credit quality and risk compensation.

Today, structured finance assets – asset backed securities (“ABS”) – form a European market with over Eur1 000 billion-worth of outstanding assets. Particularly in Europe, the market’s growth since 2009 is not only indicative that investors view structured finance as an attractive investment opportunity, but is also arguably…

Building on our studies showing a strong relationship between the environmental, social and governance performance of companies and their credit spreads, we have partnered with researcher Beyond Ratings to determine whether similar connections exist in the sovereign credit market.

This report 24-page by Wells Fargo Investment Institute discusses the organisation's methodology for constructing capital market assumptions (CMAs) of the various asset classes as well as the long-term factors that may affect the overall investment-strategy process. It is intended to accompany its monthly Asset Allocation…

A client recently asked an intriguing question: “Do style factors behave differently after a yield-curve inversion?” Intuitively, one might think they would. Particularly if a recession were looming, investors might turn to stocks that are less volatile, lower beta, more profitable, less leveraged, etc. We studied the impact…

This paper provides a synthesis of explanations for why the natural rate of interest, r*, has fallen over the last several decades. Demographic factors, declining productivity, slower output growth, and increasing inequality likely all have been important factors.

Vanguard research shows that liability-hedging strategies should focus on the portions of the liability that contribute the most to risk rather than hedging all components equally. Our analysis shows that hedging long-dated liabilities is expected to mitigate surplus risk to the greatest extent possible. Strategies should…

An obscure and heterodox branch of economic theory is quickly gaining support from prominent politicians in the US and beyond, which could have big implications for policymaking, argues David Nowakowski.

Collateralized loan obligations are not the harbingers of doom they’ve been made out to be. Here’s what the critics are missing.

We believe that a better approach for investors seeking traditional EM exposure is through actively managed strategies that focus on country-level macroeconomic and political research and standalone analysis of specific risk factors such as currency, credit spreads and interest rates.

Robert Tipp, CFA, Managing Director, Chief Investment Strategist, and Head of Global Bonds, discusses the demographic and economic factors that affect projections of the long-run equilibrium for global interest rates, concluding that rates are likely to stay lower for longer.

The evolution in index investing has led to a wide range of indices and investment vehicles for institutional investors to choose from depending on their financial objectives and needs. This report by BlackRock highlights how institutions are using ETFs across asset classes to improve portfolio outcomes.

The authors provide an overview of factor investing in fixed income markets, then describe a particular portfolio construction methodology that may have the potential to minimize some of the pitfalls of factor integration while preserving the benefits of factor utilisation.

As the intensifying yearn for yield by investors increasingly bumps up against “the uncomfortable truth” of declining interest rates amidst soaring fiscal deficits and bulging debt loads, KKR’s Global Macro, Balance Sheet, and Risk Analytics team has analyzed what yield-oriented investors, especially those with large swaths…

Green bonds made their first appearance in 2008 with an issue from the World Bank. Since then, growing concerns about greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change have prompted both a surge in the popularity of environmental, social and governance (ESG) mandates and green impacted-related issuance to finance climate-…

Distinguishing which risks are more likely to pay in Fixed Income Markets versus those that probably won’t.