The cycle of banks calling outstanding capital bonds continued this week and we’ll soon be bidding fond farewells to two of our long held and favourite positions; Nationwide’s 6.875% Additional Tier 1 (CoCo) and Barclays’ 14% hybrid Tier 1.

Emerging Market (EM) bonds have had a good year so far. While they are not at the very top of the performance table, the hard currency CEMBI (Corporate Emerging Markets Bond Index) is up 5.69% in $ since the start of the year, and the EMBI (Sovereigns) is up 6.32%; not bad at all.

Last Friday’s strong US GDP reading for the first quarter has sparked several days of debate between TwentyFour portfolio managers. The 3.2% reading was 100bp ahead of consensus, so a strong beat at the headline level, but the components accounting for it, such as inventory building, suggested the figure was an aberration and likely to reverse in Q2.

Since the result of the UK referendum in June 2016 there has been a noticeable ‘Brexit-premium’ associated with most sterling denominated assets.

We hear from the portfolio managers about how their fixed income specialism gives them a unique insight into global bond markets.

For fixed income investors, it has been impossible to ignore the proliferation of press coverage about the growth of the triple-B rated corporate bond market, and a coming wave of downgrades for companies rated BBB to high yield, with these ‘fallen angels’ exposing investors to mark-to-market losses at best, and defaults at worst.

TwentyFour Asset Management CEO, Mark Holman, explains how high conviction has been made an integral part of the firm's investment process, and why he is in no doubt this approach can lead to material outperformance over the longer term.