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Same target, different destinations 

Integrated Risk Management , Models/Client Cases

Target-date funds (TDFs) have gained wide adoption in U.S. defined-contribution plans over the last decade, aided by the proliferation of auto-enrollment features and the funds’ presentation as a “set it and forget it” approach.

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Home bias in fixed income: Has it helped or hurt? 

Fixed Income , Global Investing , Integrated Risk Management

Has global diversification historically helped reduce risk in the fixed-income portfolios of U.S. defined-benefit (DB) pension plans? Our backtests show that globalizing bond allocations would have increased risk measured relative to a liability benchmark. For such plans, home bias in bond portfolios would have reduced active risk over the period of our study.

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Beware of FRTB cliff effects. Sharp curvatures ahead. 

Integrated Risk Management , Fixed Income , Models/Client Cases , Risk Management

The Basel committee’s revised market-risk capital requirements contain a small surprise with potentially big implications. Cliff effects remain in the framework.

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Evaluating the impact of LIBOR fallback 

Fixed Income , Global Investing , Integrated Risk Management

The planned discontinuation of LIBOR and other interbank offer rates sometime in 2022 will affect a large number of existing financial contracts based on these benchmarks.

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Have High-Yield ETFs Created Liquidity Risk? 

Fixed Income , Risk Management , Integrated Risk Management

In the fourth quarter of 2018, redemptions of high-yield ETFs soared to approximately 25% of these funds’ assets under management (AUM), according to data provider IHS Markit.

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Santander’s coco extension: The new market norm? 

Models/Client Cases , Fixed Income , Risk Management , Integrated Risk Management

Banco Santander announced it would extend — i.e., not call — its additional-tier-one contingent-convertible (coco) bond. Was the market caught off guard?

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The risk in risk-parity strategies 

Fixed Income , Integrated Risk Management

The relationship between bonds and equities may be especially important to investors who employ a risk-parity approach. In our analysis, as the bond-equity correlation turned strongly positive, the effect on risk-parity portfolios was much greater than that on traditional 60/40 equity/bond portfolios.

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What would a “No deal” Brexit mean for markets? 

Global Investing , Integrated Risk Management

Financial markets are increasingly edgy about prospects for the U.K. Parliament’s expected Dec. 11 vote on a Brexit deal with the European Union.

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U.S. real yields: opportunities and warning signs 

Fixed Income , Integrated Risk Management

Despite the recent rally in the U.S. government bond market, real U.S. bond yields (i.e., nominal yield minus the market-implied rate of inflation) still remain substantially higher than at the beginning of the year. This may be both a blessing and a curse for investors.

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Investing in convertible bonds when rates rise 

Models/Client Cases , Fixed Income , Risk Management , Integrated Risk Management

Is my convertible bond more like a stock or a bond? How can I identify convertible bonds offering protection from rising rates?