Fixed Income

The TwentyFour Corporate Bond Fund has recently celebrated its 5 year anniversary. Partner and Portfolio Manager Chris Bowie looks back and reflects on the successes and challenges of running the fund over the last five years as well as providing an outlook for the Fund going forward.

Given the material positive performance seen in other parts of the fixed income markets in 2019, the CLO relative value proposition now looks even more attractive.

A rate cut now makes very little sense to us, and wastes one of the few bullets the BoE has left in its armoury. If they do decide to cut next week, we think it will be reversed within 12 months.

TwentyFour Asset Management, the London and New York-based specialist fixed income boutique of Vontobel Asset Management, has launched the Vontobel Fund - TwentyFour Sustainable Short-Term Bond Income Fund.

Partner and Portfolio Manager Chris Bowie looks at some of the myths and opportunities within the sterling credit markets and trends we expect for the year ahead.

Ben Hayward looks at the Q4 performance for Asset Backed Securities and provides an outlook for the year ahead.

Chris Bowie looks at the performance of the Outcome Driven strategy over the last quarter and provides his outlook for 2020.

CEO and Portfolio Manager Mark Holman discusses Q4 performance for the Strategic Income strategy and provides his outlook for 2020.

We have talked regularly about avoiding ‘next year’s skeletons’, and this is now more pertinent given the strength of the current technical backdrop, combined with spread levels that are significantly tighter relative to this time last year.

We have already highlighted the blistering pace of bond sales in both Europe and the US, and this being met with apparently insatiable demand from fixed income investors. Since European ABS markets tend to lag broader fixed income, it seems fitting that we have had to wait another week before seeing that primary machine start to accelerate.

While the European bond market was setting records last week, the US market has also begun 2020 with a flurry of transactions backed up by record inflows.

Kicking off the new year, we expected the new issue market to be very active and we certainly haven’t been disappointed, with the good momentum created at the end of last year – thanks to the US and China reaching a ‘phase one’ agreement and the resounding victory by the Conservatives paving the way for Brexit negotiations to move forward – allowing pent-up borrowing demand to hit the market.