A debt-fuelled arms race is financing the AI revolution, but Yarra Capital’s Phil Strano warns today’s “pristine” tech titans could soon resemble the overborrowed European telcos that burned bond investors in the 3G boom.
Investment-grade credit is having a moment. For Phil Strano, portfolio manager at Yarra Capital Management, the appeal lies not in hype or headlines, but in a confluence of fundamentals that are increasingly difficult for serious investors to ignore.
A full three months since President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff announcements sparked panic in financial markets, macro developments have been benign. The passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” has brought clarity on the fiscal outlook, but uncertainty on trade negotiations remains. Franklin Templeton Fixed Income CIO Sonal Desai explains what this means for investors going forward.
At the recent Investment Leaders Forum in Byron Bay, Dr. Christian Baylis, the founder and CIO of Fortlake Asset Management, delivered a dense, high-speed exposition of credit markets today: what’s broken, what’s misunderstood, and what’s ripe for reinvention.
For much of the last decade, fixed income has been the dinner guest that no one wanted to sit next to. Low yields, scarring losses, and correlation breakdowns left duration firmly out of favour. But, argues Haran Karunakaran, Investment Director at Capital Group, that sentiment may be both outdated and dangerously misaligned with the realities of today’s market.
The planned transition of $44 billion worth of additional Tier 1 (AT1) bank hybrids to Tier 2 capital by 2032 will see the last bank hybrid disappear by March 2032, bringing to an end an era that income-oriented Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) investors will remember mostly fondly. In this guest article, Simon Dawkins, Partner and Head of Capital Markets at Escala Partners, lifts the lid on a better alternative for sophisticated investors.
With rates well and truly crested and bonds once again showing their strength as a defensive ballast mechanism, Capital Group believes the time might be right for investors to swap out cash-like investment vehicles for investment grade credit.
The Bank of Japan has been marching to a different beat than other central banks. While the Federal Reserve, ECB and Bank of England hurried to ramp up rates in a battle against inflation, a deflationary mist lingered over Japan. Until now…
Credit and equity markets both suffered a very bad 2022, as the collapse of negative correlation between stock and bond prices left no safe haven for investors. But 2023 could be a big year for bonds, with analysts warning investors waiting on the sidelines that they risk missing out.
With central banks running out of meaningful avenues to impact economies and markets rife with volatility, many investors will be tempted to dial back risk as much as possible.
Atchison Consultants’ Kevin Toohey on why bond benchmarks only cover a slice of a diverse universe.
Bill Prendergast discusses the role of fixed income and its role in portfolios today.
