COVID-19

As the Delta variant establishes a hold in many countries, forcing some governments to re-assess reopening policies, the market is beginning to feel its impact. The implication on growth remains unclear, but early indications suggest the growth rate may have peaked for this year, albeit continuing its recovery.

So far, lockdown restrictions have suppressed each wave of the virus; will the competent authorities have the conviction to see this latest wave through without erring on the side of caution once again?

TwentyFour's CEO, Mark Holman, discusses market conditions in Q2 2021 and provides his outlook for the year ahead.

TwentyFour Partner and Portfolio Manager, Douglas Charleston, explains how ABS markets have performed in Q2 2021 and provides his outlook for the year ahead.

TwentyFour Partner and Portfolio Manager, Gordon Shannon, discusses how Investment Grade markets have performed in Q2 2021 and provides his outlook for the upcoming months.

Clearly 2021 has brought a change in narrative around long duration assets and the risks of further yield curve steepening.

ESG investing was tipped to be the biggest theme of 2020 for financial markets, but was swiftly superseded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has dominated investors’ thoughts since Q1. We thought it was important to revisit this topic and explore if and how the pandemic has changed the world of ESG.

Regular readers will know that we have a positive medium term view of spread products. This is based on a number of factors; valuations in our view are reasonably attractive compared to history, we are convinced that both monetary and fiscal stimulus will remain in place for an extended period of time, and perhaps most importantly we remain at a very early stage of the new cycle.

Having fallen behind other markets in the post-COVID rally due to a lack of direct central bank support, we believe European ABS is set to outperform other parts of fixed income in the coming months as supply wanes and investors look to pick up on what we think could be a compelling relative value opportunity.

Corporate hybrids have evolved in recent years into a large and well-established asset class within the European fixed income market, with €185bn of bonds outstanding.

One of the legacies of Europe’s post-crisis lending landscape was a huge retrenchment in risk appetite, amplified by a lack of bank capital and in some instances funding for an extended period of time.

Elena Rinaldi discusses the performance of CLOs and leveraged loans post-COVID.