And this Fixed Income jungle has been dramatically impacted over the last decade by unprecedented challenges and U-turns.
Over a decade ago negative rates started looming, forcing fixed income investors to explore uncharted territories. Quantitative easing, Helicopter Money became the fad driving a never seen period of Easy Money. One of the impact was a massive increase in issuance in the Emerging Markets Debt space, while on the contrary in Developed Markets the High Yield universe experienced a singular shrink in size.
However since 2022 a clear trend reversal was observed with the Central Banks acting as King of the Jungle.
Prolonged rates hikes shaped a definitive U-turn, in favor of more textbook conditions. With financing costs spiking, the trees began to shake, like the default of relatively new issuers - such as Ghana, Sri Lanka, Zambia -, or corporate default rates trending upper their average since 2019.
Yet the current environment is supportive, as inflation is trending lower and the economic slowdown in the US and Europe is fueling hopes for rates cuts, as ignited by the Fed on the 18th of September 2024 .
As the landscape in the Fixed Income jungle is ever changing, a new approach is needed to provide informed insights and actionable investment decisions.
In an era of data-driven decision-making and complex economic dynamics, Candriam has developed a sophisticated proprietary framework for assessing fair value.
By capturing the nuances of factors such as economic growth, inflation and central bank policy, this framework provides actionable insights into the fair value pricing of sovereign debt and credit spreads.
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Bond markets are inefficient, providing multiple relative value opportunities as well as downside risks.
For example High Yield Credit markets have shrunk in size by 25% over the last 2 years. Although it provides a strong technical support, it is important to keep a close watch on fundamentals for when the tide goes out: understanding downside risk for each issuer is today more than ever a key factor to select the most appropriate bonds in a High Yield portfolio.
Explore further Candriam award-winning[2] investment approach in the High Yield space:
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Environmental crisis, Social unrest, Governance flaws: ESG factors matters every day more and more, notably on Corporate Credit markets.
Green bonds are now supplemented by social bonds, sustainable bonds, and sustainability-linked bonds, which provide not only new investment opportunities, but also offer new information and transparency to all investors as issuers report increasingly useful metrics.
More transparency, more complexity, more opportunities to evaluate and control risk, more opportunities for active management, and above all, more need for fundamental analysis:
Go one step further with Candriam sustainable plan for investing in European Investment Grade Credit.
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