Long duration fixed income assets — including those with negative yields may offer liability immunization properties, as well as return potential to investors with long-term obligations, by mitigating the interest rate risk inherent in the liability stream.
We are proponents of a benchmark-aware approach to fixed income investing that provides important risk management discipline while addressing some of the issues associated with passively tracking an index.
It is helpful to view current rates in real, in addition to nominal, terms since real interest rates determine the actual realized return, net of the inflation effect, on nominal asset values.
Active managers are increasingly being asked to demonstrate just how actively they manage their portfolios. The relative risk of an active portfolio has typically been measured by tracking error — a portfolio’s expected or realized standard deviation from a benchmark return over time.
