View transcript
After a very, very weak 2022 for all bond markets, there's a bit more good news on the horizon. So the good news, I think, for the medium term investors in the bond markets is that bonds are interesting again, all yields in all markets are now substantially higher than they were before. In the short term, it's really a case of the two big risks for bond markets, the interplay between interest rates and interest rate risk in the different asset classes that feeds through from central bank actions and inflation expectations. And on the credit side, where you're more exposed to corporate risk, it's the difference between credit spreads and predicted default rates. So in the areas that I look at, which is really the the riskier end of the corporate bond markets in high yield, we think actually, there's quite an interesting valuation disconnect between credit spreads and expected defaults, particularly in the high yield floating rate market and to a certain extent as well the loan market. The high yield market for conventional fixed rate trades a little bit more expensive, and there's certainly some good opportunities in investment grade where default rates are historically very, very low. But even so, you get some pretty attractive spreads. The difficulty, I think in terms of the government markets and to a certain extent the high grade market is the duration question. Markets are being very, very volatile in that space, very eager to price in more dovish central bank policy. But as we saw in dramatic fashion in 2022 during the summer, markets were too eager to price that in, and central bankers had to come out and say, wait a minute, we're going to be hiking rates for longer. I think we had a bit of an adjustment to that. Yields sold off again last autumn, but again, since then they've been rallying, rallying pretty quickly. So to get that duration question correct, you have to be very nimble and very tactical. So for those investors that are less willing or less able to take that duration question, we find some interesting pockets in the shorter duration investment grade market where you can exploit shorter term yields and the yield curve is still very steep at the short point, very attractive in terms of all in levels, but also in the in the high yield market. We like high yield, floating rate bonds where you take zero duration, you still get the benefit of interest rate hikes and central banks in your favour with no hit to capital. And most importantly, credit spreads seem to be very elevated in that part of the market roughly 700 to 800 basis points, which is a level very consistent with a poor recession. We think, in fact, recession, could be milder than first expected with default rates much, much less than the market is implying, which gives us a good valuation cushion to go in there. All in all, 10% type returns in the high yield market are very much possible just purely from a yield basis, and it scales down there depending on your interest rate risk and appetite for credit. We do think central banks are closer to the end of the monetary policy hiking cycle than the start, particularly for US investors, less so for sterling less so for European investors, where central banks may be forced to be a bit more of an extended rate hike cycle. So the floating rate element still has something to play for you still get automatic coupons going up as the central bank rate hikes come through. But more importantly for floating rate notes in the high yield space is what you get in terms of credit spread and protection on the downside from defaults, High yield floating rate notes are a very, very senior secured, intensive asset class recovery rates in some senior secured bonds. When things go wrong, give you much, much higher recoveries on average, 60 to 80% of your money back for each default. That's much better than conventional high yield, which can average around about 30 to 40% of your money back in a default. So again being higher up the cap structure as defaults increase. And we certainly expect they will increase over the next year as recessionary conditions and consumer spending starts to slow down in Europe and the US and the UK, That is an important factor, so that will help mitigate losses. But again, the the yield and the spread opportunity is very interesting, and then you've got the floating rate element as central banks are still yet to reach their peak in the hiking cycle, which will work in your favour. Well, the fixed income market in general is pretty good at pricing in inflation expectations and central bank actions. As a reaction to that, what it hasn't been good at is getting those expectations correct. So there's still going to be a lot of volatility that we still think there's going to be peaks and troughs in the yield market. The good news, though, is that your starting point for that volatility is a lot higher than it used to be. So you can still be a little bit too early still get things wrong, but you're yield in general over the medium term will help really cushion any short term losses that that increases. Inflation expectations are very difficult to gauge and very difficult to price correctly, but we'll see what happens over the next 2 to 3 years. Again, I think that the important message here is that fixed income in general is giving you a much better pricing point than even two years ago, and it has really dealt with some of those inflation expectations and priced in a lot of the bad news. So going forward, we see more upside than we do downside from that factor