Europe

Global bond markets have moved sharply in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as investors have tried to assess the impact of an unprecedented raft of financial and economic sanctions. Mark Holman looks at the potential implications for inflation and growth, and highlights some areas of fixed income where yields have risen to near-crisis levels.

Default rate estimations depend on how you define defaults and what index you use, but there is no doubt we are at record lows in European high yield at the moment.

European bank equity has been among the hardest hit sectors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as fears of losses and a flight to quality have prompted investors to change positioning.

Yield curve shape and yield curve change are often good predictors of the state of the economy and its outlook.

As 2021 wore on we became increasingly concerned that the disconnect between asset prices, economic fundamentals and monetary policy was becoming more acute.

With inflation soaring and the economic recovery looking more fragile, we look at three famous central bank policy errors to demonstrate why they can be so dangerous for investors, and consider how a fixed income portfolio can be strengthened against the risk.

Yesterday was a noisy day for the Bank of England (BoE) and European Central Bank (ECB), usually an undesirable situation for market participants.

A member of the Multi-Sector Bond team discusses market conditions in Q4 2021 and provides her outlook for the new year.

If 2021 was a bad year for global bond returns, it follows there were few natural shelters to be found within fixed income from the brunt of inflation and rates-driven volatility; the Barclays Global Aggregate Index (a widely used broad measure of bond performance) returned -4.7% in USD terms, while European investment grade credit returned -1.1% despite credit spreads tightening over the course of the year.

Inflation was the dominant theme across financial markets in 2021, and we think it is likely to be a big driver of returns again in 2022.

With inflation and rate hikes dominating market discourse, we expect floating rate assets such as ABS and CLOs to benefit from increasing demand in 2022.

The first two trading weeks of the year are coming to an end and unlike previous years they have been packed with activity.