Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, low and negative interest rates and climbing valuations were making it difficult to construct a credit portfolio for all seasons. With the additional issues presented by the pandemic and its resultant economic fallout, the challenge became that much more difficult. You’d never know it speaking to科林Purdie和Josh Lohmeier, however.Purdie，Aviva Investors的首席投资官员，信贷, and his colleague北美投资等级信贷负责人Lohmeier, don’t downplay investor concerns – but they are confident that their approach and strategy can handle whatever global markets throw at them. II recently spoke with Purdie and Lohmeier about where they see value and alpha in the credit market right now.
We’re not trying to pump the gas or the brake, or time the market. Ours is a story of allocating risk more effectively than the market. We’ve built our entire strategy around portfolio construction and risk allocation so that we don’t have to guess the possible direction of the market. If we can achieve a better understanding of why and where credit benchmarks are inefficient at a point in time, and still get great idiosyncratic ideas bubbling up from our research team, our job as portfolio managers and risk allocators is to put those pieces of the puzzle together in a more thoughtful way. The end goal is to deliver consistently positive outcomes for the same beta as the universes we’re being asked to manage against.
这场危机迅速升级，但我们在这一点上没有必要恐慌。我们的测试版符合基准，所以没有，好像我们坐着长，感觉错了，并且需要跳出它。这个过程保持不变，但显然我们看起来略有不同。根据欧洲欧洲央行[欧洲央行]在购买债券所做的一切，我们在欧洲多年来一直在市场上运行。除了正面的技术环境之外，普遍的基本故事是经济开始改善，欧洲从一个相对平庸的地方滴答。然后大流行击中，谈话突然变成了，“嗯，实际上，这将有一个非常尖锐，潜在的短但深处对经济影响，它会比其他部门更多地影响一些部门。”
例如，在美国，银行业迅速击中，因为人们正在思考它将重新成为2008年。我们立即确定它不是金融危机，而是一个企业危机。因此，这是一个看待部门的基本面和估值和平衡，反对技术人员 - 这是一直在改变的问题 - 并试图确定我们是否因我们所采取的风险而得到报酬。我们的过程让我们在我们想要的地方 - 我们不需要尽快卸载风险。
No, we still have a view on the markets. Allocating risk is like dancing a delicate tango – you work very hard to figure out where the best value is across sectors, curves and ratings, then you strategically position your risks in a way that allows you to neutralize your beta to the benchmark – all while getting rich alpha from your top idiosyncratic picks and being more efficiently allocated structurally. Overall, I don’t think our industry does a very good job of allocating risk. It does a great job of finding idiosyncratic things it likes and can articulate, but not a great job of holistically putting it together in a more thoughtful way that gives a client a better risk-adjusted return. That’s the area of the market where I think we’ve excelled, and we’ve really seen a lot of external growth over the last couple of years on the back of that process and that message.
我们根据我们认为将会发生的世界创建一个投资组合，然后我们强调对不同环境的投资组合，包括严重的系统性冲击。我们这样做是为了确保我们认为正在发生的世界建造的核心投资组合也将发生在全身冲击环境中的下行。通过迫使您的投资组合始终为这两个大师提供服务，您可以为Q1所经历的环境做好准备。Instead of scrambling to change your strategy or position, you’re immediately going on offense and thinking, “Based on what I know now, and based on the valuations I see today post-volatility, where can I shift risk to take advantage of it?” You’re not adding or reducing risk at that point, you’re trying to recycle risk.
One key area is the six-, seven-, and eight-year part of the IG [investment grade] credit curve for riskier credit, relative to the one- to five-year part of the curve. Structurally, we think it makes sense to own more of your riskier beta in the belly of the curve – between six and 10 years, and still have plenty of core defensive positions out on the longer duration part of the market, knowing that fundamentals in valuations have gotten a little stretched. The very front end one- to five-year part of the IG market has been incredibly bid up. Valuations are stretched based on where we’re at in the economic recovery. The technical/stimulus tail has wagged the dog with regards to valuations across all risk assets.
Now it’s about hunting and pecking to balance opportunities that you believe in fundamentally, versus the technical argument, and a very real risk that governments are going to do their best to inflate anything they can, including risk assets – so the technicals can keep grinding tighter, as well. Everyone knows that’s where the Fed is focusing its corporate bond buying and its liquidity measures: the market has grasped hold of that and almost priced it in as if companies can’t default. We would caution investors and say, “They’re providing liquidity, they’re not providing revenues or cashflows, so don’t mistake liquidity for bailouts.”
从全球性的角度来看，技术和基本面将使您带入不同的方向。对于长期投资，我们正在寻找我们对现金流和商业模式有信心的部门。我们没有对某些特定时间的任何特定时间进行赌注，或者对特定行业的恢复。我们希望疫苗会在某些时候来通过，但消费者趋势发生了变化或加速。人们如何做到他们所做的事情 - 以及他们所做的地方 - 即使有疫苗也会有所不同。我们对IG有信心，因为这是迫使人们寻找产量，但与此同时，知道您购买的是什么，了解您的学分，并了解世界已发生变化。许多不适应变化的公司最终会受到影响，并且在高屈服空间内有些内容会默认。因此，现在一个交易主题是留在我们在现金流和商业模式上了解的地方。