- Fixed Income Portfolio Manager
Singapore, Intermediary
Change
In this edition of “Rapid Fire Questions,” fixed income portfolio manager Campe Goodman shares his assessment on the first year of Trump 2.0, and perspectives on why he remains constructive on fixed income, and where he is finding attractive opportunities.
Question: How do you assess the first year of Trump 2.0?
So, the last year has certainly been an interesting one from a markets’ perspective. What we have seen from the Trump administration has been both a combination of somewhat orthodox, fiscal and monetary management, and certainly some surprises as well. Most notably, the trade policy that we've seen from the Trump administration certainly spooked the markets for a while. But really what we've seen in general has been that the administration has been fairly conscious of its effect on markets, and I think that's why after the disruptions that we saw in April caused by the announcement of these major tariffs, following that markets really recovered quite nicely.
Growth in the US has been relatively strong. And so, even though we've seen some weakness in labor markets, inflation has been coming down, rates have been coming down somewhat as well. And so, the overall conditions for financial assets have been really quite favorable over the past year.
I think it's important somewhat to separate the positives on the management of financial markets from some of the volatility that has been caused around more geopolitical issues. But as a financial market participant, I'm really focused on what the implications are for the assets that we're investing in.
Question: How should investors approach fixed income in this environment?
I think in this environment, investors first of all should be excited about fixed income. I expect that overall yields are going to be stable to lower over the coming year. We're in an environment where inflation has been coming down, growth is good, but not accelerating too rapidly, labour markets are a little bit soft. That's a great environment for fixed income overall, both for high quality rates type fixed income and for credit as well. So, I’m very optimistic on what we should expect fixed income to do.
Beyond that, look, we are in an environment where credit spreads are a little bit on the tight side in certain asset classes. So, I think it's really important that we stay flexible. We look for opportunities across a lot of different parts of the markets. We are finding some opportunities outside of some of the most traditional US, European credit types of sectors. There are still great places to look in this environment, but flexibility and diversification are very important.
Question: What are your 1-2 highest conviction ideas?
In the current environment, I think we have to acknowledge that certain parts of the fixed income markets don't have great value right now—most notably US credit, especially US investment grade and US high yield. So, I'm looking to other parts of the market for ideas. Most notably, I'm excited about emerging market debt, especially emerging market corporate debt. Some of the riskier issues in emerging markets look really good.
Now, there are still opportunities also in developed markets. I'm particularly excited about convertible bonds. Convertible bonds offer this really nice optionality where if markets are steady and spreads stay tight, then convert should do okay. But they can continue to do well as equity markets continue to go up. So, they have a really attractive upside downside for the current environment. Furthermore, some of the sectors that we're focusing on in our convertible bond purchases are things like tech and biotech, where we still think there's great value and potential for a lot of upside.
Question: What are the key risks to look out for in the next 6 to 12 months?
So, there are some things that we really want to be careful about as we're thinking about investing in these markets today. The big risk is valuation. Credit spreads are not especially generous, they are somewhat on the tight side and that means the risk reward is not as good as it has been at other times. The way that we are mitigating that risk is number one, we're looking for opportunities outside of some of the traditional sectors. We're holding more cash and high quality assets than usual because we do expect that we will get some dislocations over the next 6 to 12 months and that's going to give us a chance to take advantage of those dislocations. So, right now we're playing a little more defense and that will mean that when the time is right, we can play offense.
The views expressed are those of the speaker at the time of filming. Other teams may hold different views and make different investment decisions. The value of your investment may become worth more or less than at the time of original investment. While any third-party data used is considered reliable, its accuracy is not guaranteed. For professional, institutional, or accredited investors only.
