TwentyFour

France’s chronic government paralysis repeatedly created headlines this month, and fixed income markets are rightly worried about the sustainability of French government borrowing levels. Meanwhile, forecasts of a £50bn blackhole in the UK’s public finances are keeping gilt yields elevated and have made this November’s UK Budget a potential flashpoint.

Earlier this month, we wrote about the high cost of staying in cash in the Euro market. In that note, we argued that a combination of inflation, low front-end rates and steeper curves, favoured a rotation out of cash and cash like instruments into other alternatives that delivered better real returns, including credit. Building on this argument, we wanted to extend this perspective to the US dollar market and highlight a few key points.

As fixed income investors face inflation surprises, tariff rhetoric and growing concerns around central bank independence, Gordon Shannon, Partner and Co-Head of Investment Grade, explains why the focus remains on resilience.

In our latest Multi-Sector Bond quarterly update, Jakub Lichwa, Portfolio Management, discusses why we retain a favourable view on credit despite tighter spreads.

In our latest Asset-Backed Securities (ABS) quarterly update, Aza Teeuwen, Partner and Co-Head of ABS, explains how strong CLO issuance, robust investor demand and tightening spreads have driven a standout year for the European ABS market.

France is in the news again. Prime Minister Lecornu became the latest casualty of the French politics saga that began just over a year ago when president Macron called a surprise early election.

In November 2023, we estimated that holding cash, as opposed to staying invested, could cost investors 10-30% over a three-year period. At the time, we highlighted that interest rates had reached their cyclical peaks and were likely to decrease from that point.

With the Fed’s stance suggesting it is prioritising growth over sticky inflation risks, volatility in longer dated bonds is likely to persist and the case for increasing duration in fixed income is not compelling.

Collateralised loan obligations, or CLOs, have become an increasingly popular asset class within global fixed income.

As active managers we are naturally looking for bonds that we believe are mispriced, therefore offering attractive risk-adjusted carry or, sometimes, a capital gain if market pricing falls into line with our view. Equally important is to avoid sectors facing structural or protracted cyclical downturns where we don’t think valuations reflect the fundamentals.

The $5.2tr asset-backed finance (ABF) market represents a growing opportunity to gain exposure to high quality loan pools and the returns they can generate.

The Trump administration’s immigration policy leaves the US labour market at a pivotal juncture.