
Implementation – Relative Value

The team note that they cannot correctly call the top and bottom of market cycles and for a portfolio manager to rely on achieving this to generate performance is a higher-risk strategy as ultimately ‘‘markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent’’[1]. Therefore, the team believes that the way in which they construct their investment themes enables the Strategy to outperform the corporate bond market over the medium to long term regardless of the direction of the underlying corporate bond market. This is key to their approach.
This implementation process is designed to isolate relative value opportunities within corporate bond markets globally by positioning versus benchmark, with an overweight to the area of the market the investment team favours and an underweight, of equal measure, to the area of the market that the investment team believes is less attractive. One important detail is that the overweight leg of each investment theme is equal to the underweight leg in terms of price sensitivity versus the benchmark. This has the ability to remove the directionality of the market so that the Strategy can potentially outperform more consistently through cycles. The team also believes this reduces tracking error, and therefore improves risk-adjusted returns.
Sizing of these positions is modulated based on the level of conviction held, which is again driven by the investment themes. For instance, if several of the investment themes suggest the same area of the market is likely to outperform, a higher level of conviction is likely to lead to a larger position size, depending on the opportunity set.
The Strategy is benchmark aware and uses various risks measures to ensure the balance between risk and reward is optimal. Specifically, when constructing the funds, the team use a combination of measures including tracking error, duration times spread, price volatility, interest rate sensitivity and return correlation when implementing the relative value positioning across the thematic risk factors.