Global Aggregate Fixed Income Strategy
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The investment team believes that market participants may often mis-value a bond issuer’s default risk, resulting in bond prices that fail to reflect the true credit profile of an issuer. However, in the team's opinion, the market, over time, will re-value the bond prices of high-quality issuers based on an improving credit profile, thereby offering investors in undervalued issuers the opportunity to potentially exploit these pricing inefficiencies and earn superior returns over the long term.
The team believes that successful portfolio management depends on four factors:
- Global Perspective
- A Value-Driven Process
- Diversified Holdings
- Deep Fundamental Research
In addition, the team thinks value can be added through active interest-rate and country management. They also contend that a value-based approach towards currency management can help generate superior fixed income returns.
Customization |
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The team delivers fixed income expertise in a customized, solutions-based approach that optimizes the application of the team's global resources to the investment objectives of the individual client. The team is client-centric in all aspects of the relationship. |
Extensive Resources of a Global Firm |
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MSIM has a cohesive team of fixed income specialists in New York, London, Singapore and Tokyo who can identify opportunities to capture returns in all major markets worldwide. They bring together an impressive range of market experience, intellectual rigour and academic achievements. |
Risk Mitigation |
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A well-balanced portfolio with exposure to a diverse range of fixed income asset classes is an important start, but it’s not enough to ensure uncorrelated returns or appropriate diversification. By managing risk at every stage of the process and paying close attention to the correlations between asset classes, the team believes the individual risks within the portfolio can be blended optimally to decrease the overall risk of the portfolio and ensure no single risk dominates. |
Right-Sized |
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Since the financial crisis, liquidity and inventories have been reduced due to stricter regulations. This restricts the ability for very large managers to hedge risks and limits their investment opportunities. The team believes a portfolio now needs to be “right-sized” to maximize investment-return opportunities. |
| 1 | Macro analysis: |
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The team seeks to determine what themes are driving asset prices across rates, countries and currencies and to evaluate the investment opportunity set based on a thematic investment thesis. The top-down process uses a combination of fundamental and quantitative analysis to identify and evaluate these investment opportunities. |
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| 2 | Asset allocation: |
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The Asset Allocation team is led by Michael Kushma, the CIO of the Global Fixed Income team, and consists of the heads of each research group. The team seeks to identify areas where implied market forecasts are out of line relative to historic trends and to identify the catalyst for the market to adjust. Internal debate is a key feature of our investing philosophy, ensuring investment ideas are tested thoroughly. |
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| 3 | Research: |
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The team's approach to fixed income investing uses a disciplined investment process and a commitment to research. Research is conducted by dedicated teams specializing in a particular niche of the fixed income market. The research teams use in-depth fundamental analysis, complemented by quantitative tools, to generate bottom-up investment ideas and are responsible for security selection. |
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| 4 | Portfolio construction and risk management: |
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Portfolio managers are responsible for implementing the investment strategies. They work to construct each portfolio in a way that conforms to individual client/strategy guidelines and objectives, while staying true to the broad strategy targets that are set by the Asset Allocation team. The portfolio managers achieve these targets by working with the research analysts to fill the sector buckets with bottom-up security selection ideas. The team views risk management as an integral part of their investment process. Based on this belief, they seek to protect their portfolios against a variety of risks through diversification, credit risk protection, and liquidity with the goal that no single risk dominates the portfolio. |
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| 5 | Trading: |
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All fixed income trades are executed by centralized Global Fixed Income trading desk. Central dealing segregates the trading function away from the decision making process, and allows the portfolio managers to focus on managing the portfolio. This procedural separation helps ensure that all accounts are structured according to the parameters established by the team. |
Effective November 1, 2022, Leon Grenyer was added as a Portfolio Manager for this strategy. Effective October 31, 2022, Jim Caron no longer serves as Portfolio Manager. Effective December 1, 2023, Chris Roth is no longer serving as Portfolio Manager on the Strategy.
Effective 30 August 2024, Richard Ford is no longer serving as Portfolio Manager, and Vishal Khanduja was added as Portfolio Manager on the Portfolio.