Sharing our convictions

How do you build the perfect portfolio? Portfolio construction is a little like gourmet cooking, where quality ingredients are combined to create a balanced meal. Portfolio Manager David Souccar reveals our view on what’s at the heart of that delicate balance between risk and return.

Contentious call decisions from high profile issuers can provoke a fair bit of debate and emotion among participants in the Additional Tier 1 (AT1) market, and Deutsche Bank has put itself in the spotlight by announcing it will be calling only one of two AT1 bonds approaching their call dates.

Last week we wrote about a notable shift in market sentiment and how this had impacted our view of relative value within fixed income. So, where has the impact been felt, and has it changed our view on relative value?

You can now watch the replay of our webinar: A new world order? Where next for markets and Fixed Income?

Following the introduction of the European Union’s securitisation regulations in 2013, the Australian securitisation market initially lagged behind in aligning with European investors’ standards. Over the past decade, however, the market has undergone significant changes and recent record issuance shows investors are increasingly seeing the opportunity in Australian ABS.

Volatility in Bunds seems to have calmed down slightly in the last few days as markets continue to digest huge fiscal expansion plans from Germany and the European Union. At the same time, many forecasters have been downgrading their US growth projections after reassessing the level of pain President Trump seems willing to inflict on the US economy in order to implement his policy agenda.

Investigative analyst Zhen Li recently attended the Shanghai’s second Global Developer Conference. Zhen’s on-the-ground research reveals concerns about the viability and sustainability of DeepSeek’s model given the intense competition in China's AI sector and lack of clarity around monetization of AI models.

We remain cautiously optimistic about Fixed Income returns. Tail risks are elevated, which dampens our confidence in “risk on” markets. But alpha opportunities still await risk-aware, active investors. Those who try to predict the next major macro shift may find themselves echoing Luke Skywalker’s words, “your overconfidence is your weakness.”

With the UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) set to publish its updated economic and fiscal outlook on March 26, we are starting to see headlines concerning potential changes the Labour government could make to its budgeting plans in response to shifting forecasts.

The incoming German government’s removal of the country’s infamous “debt brake” is a serious pivot for the typically fiscally conservative country, and one that we think highlights the value on offer in European assets.

Traditional volatility models often lag real market shifts, leaving portfolios vulnerable. Our new Quanta Byte introduces State-dependent Risk (SDR) - a dynamic approach that adapts faster to evolving conditions. By leveraging historical patterns and similarity measures, SDR more accurately forecasts volatility, helping investors navigate risk and protect their ascent.

Challenging entrenched biases, this special International Women's Day Quanta Byte decodes the myth of meritocracy in finance. Featuring insights from Prof. Renée Adams and Ola Mahmoud, discover how data dismantles stereotypes and reveals why perceptions of women in finance often stray from reality.

European government bonds have sold off sharply this week in the wake of Germany’s market-moving fiscal measures, while European equities, especially those of banks, have moved in the other direction.

Overnight, the CDU/CSU (the winner of the latest German election) and the SPD (the leader of the current parliament set to end on March 25) announced Germany’s largest fiscal policy shift in decades.

New world order with Trump 2.0 at the helm. New day, new risks. What’s keeping investors awake at the moment and how does this impact EM Fixed Income?

Last week, risky assets continued to experience a somewhat volatile period. The tone was generally a risk off one, with correlations between risk free and risky assets back to negative.

The driving force behind this performance is the Chinese tech sector, fuelled by hopes that a larger adoption of AI could boost earnings. A confirmation of improved earnings, the resurgence of consumption confidence and sequential stabilization of the overall economy will be needed to solidify and extend the recent rally.

Energy and resource efficiency is often underappreciated, but it has played a pivotal role in driving global emissions lower. Explore how we can benefit from the diverse opportunity set that efficiency brings, and why we believe its importance is set to continue.

The Additional Tier 1 (AT1) primary market has begun 2025 with a bang, with a sterling perpetual non-call seven transaction from NatWest that hit the screens on Wednesday morning set to take issuance over €16bn equivalent year-to-date, more than double the volume we have seen over the same period in each of the last five years.

European banks‘ full year 2024 reporting season has now largely come to an end, with only a handful of issuers still to report over the next few weeks.

Since the Federal Reserve first cut interest rates in September, we have seen the most aggressive rise in US Treasury yields of any cutting cycle over the past 40 years.

The recent rally in European fixed income has partly been driven by improved economic sentiment, falling inflation expectations, and a more accommodative monetary policy outlook from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BoE).

Factor investing has long explained market behavior, but its flaws—timing dependencies, rigid linearity, and backward-looking assumptions—limit predictive power. Can AI overcome these? This Expl(AI)ning episode dissects factor evolution, their pitfalls, and how machine learning enables dynamic models. Dive into quantitative investing’s future.

In a week when US core consumer price inflation unexpectedly rose to 0.4% month-on-month and Federal Reserve (Fed) chair Jerome Powell told Congress the central bank was in “no hurry” to cut interest rates, many market participants have been surprised by the relatively muted reaction in US Treasuries (USTs).