Asset managers are rolling out smart beta bond funds as one answer to shifting ground in the fixed-income markets. Smart beta, industry parlance for rules-based investment techniques, is still in its infancy in the bond world even though it’s a widely used strategy in equities. But bond shops are racing to reinvent themselves and determine how to make money for investors in an environment of anemic yields and a lack of diverse securities, not to mention the omnipresent threat of rising interest rates from central banks. Unconstrained bond funds, which sever managers’ ties to popular benchmarks and give them more freedom to find suitable investments, have gained popularity in the past couple of years. So has聪明的测试版。
“我们已经看到了非传统指数战略的举动，”北方信托公司的资金和管理账户小组的全球总部兼管理委员会兼管理账户总部，其17个FlexShares交易所交易资金拥有80亿美元。FlexShares是灵活的索引资金，基于芝加哥的公司的智能测试版的首选名称;其中五个是固定收入指数车辆。托马斯指出，像巴克莱资本总债券指数一样的指标没有最初旨在投资，所以投资者正在评估他们想要采取的风险的风险是有意义的fixed-income投资组合以不同的方式。
In one example of聪明的测试版东莞t at Northern Trust, the firm created a shorter-duration TIPS, or Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, strategy after seeing that many portfolios used long-duration TIPS as a hedge against inflation. The longer maturities were overwhelming that hedge. In 2011, Northern Trust launched two funds — the now-$401 million FlexShares iBoxx 5-Year Target Duration TIPS Index Fund and the $2 billion FlexShares iBoxx 3-Year Target Duration TIPS Index Fund — designed to manage the volatility using shorter-duration TIPS. Starting with the investment concept for the funds, Northern Trust went to Markit, a financial information services provider based in London, to create custom benchmarks.
Matthew Tucker，Ishares固定收入战略团队负责人，纽约队以4.7万亿美元为基础黑石说，债券返回主要由持续时间和信贷风险驱动。但是，巴克莱金融债券指数是投资者核心债券分配最常见的基准之一，占利率风险约为90％，信贷风险仅为10％。“对于那些想要利率风险的投资者来说，这将有效，”Tucker说。“但其他人担心涨幅，他们也想要产量。”
随着新的Ishares美国固定收入均衡风险ETF，即2月下旬推出的Blackrock旨在创造一个固定的收入组合，更好地余额利率和信用风险。7480万美元的基金的持续时间较低的风险较少，而且旨在产生更多的收益率。虽然Blackrock使用了基于规则的战略，但它考虑了ETF积极管理。该基金的管理人员选择历史上产生最高风险调整回报的债券部门，例如抵押贷款支持的证券和高产债券额定双B和更低。然后，他们寻求平衡每个部门的风险。最后，他们使用国库期货征收利率和信贷风险。
Tucker强调，智能测试博士资金具有指数和积极管理的资金的特征：“智能测试版是基于规则的规则和相当低的成本，但也捕捉了传统的主动管理人员使用的策略。”Blackrock的研究表明，活跃经理，例如，持续时间持续较短，并更接触新兴市场债务，高收益债券和其他证券。
Tucker说，该公司的ETF试图将同样的倾斜，以风险和风险更一致的方式信用。但它与积极管理的提供不同，因为它对市场有系统而且较少。Blackrock可能会将智能测试概念应用于全球债券，部门和非核心基金;它和Northern Trust在其他车辆中提供智能测试策略，例如单独的帐户。
Scott Eldridge, director of fixed-income product strategy for Chicago area–based邀请力量Capital Management那which has $100 billion in ETFs, says he sometimes gets pushback from institutional investors that are heavily tied to their benchmarks by policy statements and board oversight. “They have to get comfortable with how an emerging-markets debt allocation, say, can move them farther away from their benchmark,” he explains. “Even in the ETF space, they have an attraction to cap-weighted indexes because that is what they’re used to.” Invesco says it has $4.5 billion in smart beta fixed-income funds.
Invesco works closely with big investors to help them understand the differences between its funds and traditional benchmarks including sector, duration or country exposure. “If the traditional benchmark has 25 percent exposure to energy-dependent companies and a smart beta rule set creates something less than that, maybe that’s an opportunity to generate additional alpha,” Eldridge says. “But investors who do it have to truly understand how they are going off benchmark.”
SMART BETA在固定收益中实施，减缓了资金的发展。股市市场高效，有关证券的丰富信息，因此指数基金通常可以轻易复制其基准。但大多数债券在柜台上贸易，有关价格的较少信息，有限的生活。基于索引的投资组合不会在基准中保持每个债券，这是不可能有效的购买和销售。“你所拥有的最大挑战之一就没有数据来源丰富，”北方信任的托马斯说。
由于Blackrock的Tucker指出，股票中的Smart Beta具有几十年后的学术研究的优势。相对较少的已发表于固定收益，即使老化婴儿潮一代变得更加保守的投资者，养老基金负担债券以履行其义务。“我希望我们会看到更多关于整个固定收入投资类别的研究，”Tucker说。这些努力可能会产生更多的产品。