UK

The hawkishness of the Fed on Wednesday paved the way for the Bank of England (BoE) to follow suit.

Soaring inflation was already a dominant theme for markets coming into 2022. The sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine have only exacerbated its expected rise, and pushed its expected peak further out.

We think a base case that central banks will follow a more measured monetary policy path than markets are currently pricing in is reasonable given the current backdrop.

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.

Last week investors were faced with a double whammy of monetary tightening from the Bank of England (BoE), which on Thursday hiked interest rates by 25bp and announced the gradual unwind of its £20bn corporate bond portfolio.

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

After a relatively quiet period during the closing weeks last year, the primary ABS market has enjoyed a solid start to 2022.

A member of our 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.

It has been a very interesting start to the year in the rates sector of the market.

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