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February 6, 2025 15 mins

After more than a decade inflation and rising interest rates have breathed new life into fixed income markets. Fund manager James Ringer joins the show to discuss what it all means for the role of fixed income in investors' portfolios.

RUNNING ORDER:

02:22 - Part one: Interest rates and the yield curve

06:07 - Part two: Known unknowns and volatility

11:06 - Part three: The role of fixed income in this new world

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
The value of investments and the incomefrom them may go down as well as up,
and investors may not get backthe amounts originally invested.
Past performance is not aguide to future performance.
The information is not an offer,solicitation or recommendation of any
funds, services or products,or to adopt any investment strategy.
This pod is marketing material issued bySchroder Investment Management Limited,

(00:25):
registered number 1893220 England.
Authorised and regulated by the FinancialConduct Authority for
informational purposes only.
Please contact your financial advisorbefore making any investment decisions.
Welcome to the Investor Download, the

(00:49):
podcast about the themes driving markets
and the economy now and in the future.
I'm your host, David Brett.
It was Bill Clinton's political adviser,James Carville, back in the '90s, that
said, I used to think if there wasreincarnation, I wanted to come back as

(01:11):
the President or the Popeor a 400 baseball hitter.
But now I want to comeback as the bond market.
You can intimidate everybody.
That was the power of the bondmarket, at least up until recently.
But years of low rates following thefinancial crisis hurt returns and
stripped away that patina of intimidation.
As a result, investors looked elsewhere.

(01:32):
People, I guess, questioning therole fixed income has in portfolios.
That's James Ringer, a fund manager andfixed income specialist at Schroders.
But the return of inflation after thepandemic forced central banks to
respond and interest rates to rise.
For the first time in nearly a generation,investors could look at
fixed income for the income.

(01:53):
Certainly things have livened up sincemost central banks were stuck at
zero for a lot of the last decade.
Despite recent cuts, US interest rates areexpected to remain elevated for longer.
That presents investors with apotential opportunity in fixed income.
It also poses them some questionswhich we'll tackle in this show.
First up, what's happeningwith interest rates?

(02:14):
On Apple podcasts,Spotify, or wherever you get your
podcasts, you're listeningto the investor download.
The market expects up to five moreadditional interest rate cuts in 2025,
taking US interest rates down to near3.5%.
Schroders' own economists expect rates tofall, too, although they expect
fewer cuts than the market.

(02:36):
Much will depend on economic policiesaround the world, particularly in the US.
We can't talk about interest rateexpectations without mentioning the yield
curve, which reflects marketexpectations of future Fed actions.
It is said that central banks, with theirability to control short term interest
rates, have more influence over the frontend of the curve, while the longer end is
determined by macroeconomicpolicies and investor behaviour.

(03:00):
I forget the technical term or the theory.
I think it's market expectations theory,but it is the idea that different parts of
the yield curves are drivenby different investor types.
It's the idea that different parts ofthe bond market have different drivers.
We've seen that over the last year andprobably more pronounced over the last
couple of months, is that they canactually move in different directions.

(03:21):
To the example of the Federal Reserve, whorates 100 basis points last year, since
then we've actually seen two-year yields,so shorter dated maturity bond yields
decline, but actually longer dated bondyields have risen,
what we call a pivot steepening.
You've seen shorter dated yieldsfall, but longer dated yields rise.
That's to the point thatreally the central bank has diminishing

(03:44):
returns or diminishing control, sorry, thefurther up the curve that you go, which is
why I think it is so important when you'reallocating to fixed income and when you're
running fixed income to actually have aview on different parts of
the interest rate curve.
Especially if you want to play centralbanks, you need to be much
further down the curve.
Your correlation between the bonds in thetwo-year space and what central banks are

(04:08):
doing is going to be a lot higher than thecorrelation between 30-year bonds
and what the central bank is doing.
The yield curve which is more of ajagged line, really, slopes up or down.
It illustrates the difference between theyield on a bond that matures in the
shorter term, say two years, and one thatmatures in the longer term, say 10 years.
In normal times, the line shouldslope upwards from left to right.

(04:29):
That's because you should receive lessincome or interest for lending over a
short period of time aspotentially less can go wrong.
However, the curve can invert in times ofstress, say when interest
rates are rising unexpectedly.
That's when shorter dated bonds couldpay more than longer dated bonds.
That was the case for a long time between2022 and late 2024, when central banks

(04:50):
were raising rates rapidly to combatinflation, but the curve reversed as it
looked like central bankswere in rate cutting mode.
But what's the yield curve telling us now?
Well, there are a number of thingsand it depends on which country.
But if we focus on the US at the moment,we can talk about the UK, it's
probably a fairly similar story.
But it's simply saying thatinvestors demand more money.

(05:14):
Sorry, a higher interest rateor a greater return for lending to
governments for a longer period of time.
The longer you lend to someone, you'dtraditionally expect to earn a higher rate
of return given the uncertainties, inparticular given the inflation
uncertainties and theinterest rate uncertainties.
If you think about a 30-year bond, you'vegot 30 years of things that potentially
happen, so you need to becompensated for that additional risk.

(05:38):
That's all the bond market and an upwardsloping yield curve is telling us is that
investors need greatercompensation for taking that risk.
That risk isn't going away.
With the election of Donald Trump in theUS and the high level of borrowing by
governments around the world, we'll lookat the potential problems facing fixed
income investors in part two of the show.
Get in touch with us by emailat schroderspodcasts@schroders.

(06:01):
com or visit our website, schroders.
com/theinvestordownload.
The yield curve is illustrating somereturn to normality in terms
of interest rate expectations.
After a couple of years of predicting a USdownturn or recession, most market
commentators, including Schroders, arepredicting a positive outcome

(06:21):
for the US economy this year.
However, there are a couple of knownunknowns that are causing turbulence.
The Fox News decision desk can nowofficially project that Donald Trump will
become the 47th Presidentof the United States.
Today, goods from Mexico, Canada, andChina could become more expensive.

(06:43):
President Trump said he's We've seenimport tariffs on production
from those countries.
Trump first threatened tariffs during hiscampaign and seems likely to
follow through with that plan.
The first is the election of Donald Trumpas President of
the US and his policies in particular,which may cause inflation to remain sticky
and interest rates may be required tobe kept higher for longer as a result.

(07:07):
That's causing somevolatility in the market.
Yes, interest rate volatility is higher,but that's a function of the fact that
really the data that we'reseeing is a lot more volatile.
A lot more volatile because we'restill really seeing the impact
of reopening from COVID.
We've seen really a deterioration in thequality of a lot of the data that we

(07:30):
actually receive on a daily basis.
We look at things like response rates.
That's the number of peoplewho are responding to surveys.
Even things like the employment reportthat you'll hear about from the UK and the
US, the response rate for thathas fallen quite significantly.
The quality of the datawe're receiving has declined.
That just makes investors a lotmore sensitive to data releases.

(07:54):
It means that the narrativecan change very, very quickly.
We've seen it on a few occasions where wetalk about the three scenarios being the
no landing, a hard landing, and a softlanding that everyone
is very familiar with.
We've seen how just one single payrollreport, that's the US jobs report, how
that can flip the narrative just from oneto another, just with one data release.

(08:15):
Whereas historically orprior to COVID, it would take months or
even quarters for the typeof narrative to change.
The biggest change that we have done, andI think most investment processes need to
do it, is move away from really, really,certainly from from active
fixed income managers.
I think it's obviously different whenyou're doing a strategic asset allocation.
But from our perspective, we have movedaway from longer run thematic

(08:40):
investment process, which isin this world quite binary.
You're either very, veryright or very, very wrong.
That produces quite low risk adjustedreturns to something that's a monthly
scenario based, which is there really toensure that we can capture
opportunities when they arise quickly.
But also if we're wrong, which happens,we're basically quick to

(09:02):
change portfolio positioning.
The ultimate goal of that is to producemuch better risk adjusted returns.
That's the biggest change.
I think it's just toimprove the investment process and
recognise that we arein a different regime.
To your question, that regimeis one of higher volatility.
The second is the levelof government borrowing.

(09:24):
For instance, US public debt as apercentage of GDP is at levels not seen
since World War II, and it's predicted torise even more over the next few decades.
The US isn't the only country experiencingthese issues, but it is home to the
biggest bond market in the world.
And bond markets tend to punish borrowersif they feel the debt is
becoming unsustainable.

(09:44):
Trump and government debt are both playinginto the higher cost of
borrowing in the longer term.
Oddly, we were actually seeing that morein other things such as what
we refer to as asset swaps.
That is the difference in yield between agovernment bond and a swap rate, which is
really the perceivedrisk-free rate at the moment.
In the US, for example, if we take the30-year bond again, the US Treasury is

(10:09):
having to borrow at nearly a percentagepoint higher than the
equivalent risk-free rate.
We're seeing those fiscal concerns notonly playing out in curves and steeper
curves, but also in thingslike asset swaps as well.
It's a phenomenon that we'vestarted to see post-COVID.
It's a function of...
It really canbe simplified by the idea of supply.

(10:32):
Prior to the last couple of years, centralbanks were buying bonds, not selling
bonds, and budget deficits were undercontrol, and so issuance
wasn't going through the roof.
At the moment, we've got the double whammyof issuance increasing because governments
are borrowing so much money, but alsocentral banks are actually selling
bonds back into the market.
You have those two sources of supply offixed income coming to the market

(10:54):
that investors have to take down.
As ever with investing,nothing is straightforward.
What's the role of fixed incomein investment portfolios?
That's coming up in thefinal part of the show.
Interest rates are on a downward trend.
Inflation appears to be under control,and the yield curve has righted itself.

(11:16):
There is a sense of normalityreturning to the world of fixed income.
But an abundance of risks remain fromrising debt levels to potentially
inflationary economic policy.
In this new volatile world of interestrates, what role does
fixed income play in portfolios?
We see it as a three-pronged thing.
It's probably the first time we'veactually had three strong

(11:40):
investment cases for fixed income.
The first is diversification, and this isprobably the most contentious one because
2022 really called that into question.
You had a year in which bothbonds and equities returned very,
very deeply negative numbers.
But what we can see is there is a veryclear relationship between equity
bond correlation correlations, i.e.

(12:00):
the level of diversification.
The lower the correlation, thebetter the diversification.
We see a very strong relationship betweenthat correlation and
the level of inflation.
We've run the numbers since 1960s.
I think our multi-assetcolleagues have done the same.
What you see is that wheninflation is high, that correlation is

(12:22):
high, which is exactlywhat we saw in 2022.
That is when bonds do not provide thehedge that people think they should.
But what we've seen since then is not onlyhas inflation declined, but also
that correlation has declined.
We think we're moving into the worldagain, not necessarily going
to see negative correlations.
I think that would be a bit of a stretch,but certainly, correlations declining, and
so bonds should work as a betterdiversifier than they have.

(12:45):
But importantly, a diversifieractually pays you an income.
Prior to COVID, it was a diversifier, butit didn't pay you an
income whilst you waited.
Now it does, which I think takes me onto the second point, which is income.
We often talk about, you often hear peopleon headlines and
titles of thought pieces talking aboutputting income back into fixed income,
which is exactly what'shappening at the moment.

(13:07):
It's finally become a compellinginvestment case in its own right.
We've got yield to maturities on someportfolios, comfortably over 4%
that are investment grade rated.
You compare that to, I think, yourstarting point of expected returns for
equities when multiples are so high, wethink that fixed income in its own right
is quite a compelling investment case.

(13:28):
Then finally, is the idea of just beingable to generate some outperformance
through active management.
I think prior to COVID, allcentral banks were stuck at zero.
There was very little difference betweenwhat economies were doing, very little
difference between inflation rates, and soquite hard to make money from relative
value and from active management.

(13:49):
Fast forward to COVID, and allcentral banks did the same thing.
All economies experiencedthe same inflation.
Again, it was difficult to really see muchdifference between economies
and different bond markets.
But where we are today, you haveeconomies doing very different things.
You've got inflation ratesfalling at different levels.
You've got very different growth rates.
With that, central banksdoing very different things.

(14:10):
That provides us opportunities to generatesome performance, some outperformance,
just by being in the right country, bybeing in the right part of the bond
curve that we've mentioned about.
So I think those three cases, which Ithink at different times and for different
investors, you place differentimportance on each one of those three.
But certainly there's a bit more of a casefor, I think, optimism than a lot

(14:34):
of the headlines that you might see.
That was the show.
We very much hope you enjoyed it.
You can subscribe to the Investor Downloadwherever wherever you get your podcasts.
If you want to get in touch with us,it's schroderspodcasts@schroders.
com.
You can find out much,much more at schroders.

(14:55):
com/insights.
New shows drop every otherThursday at 05: 00 PM UK time.
In the meantime, keep safe and go well.
The value of investments and the incomefrom them may go down as well as up, and
investors may not get back theamounts originally invested.
Past performance is not aguide to future performance.
The information is not an offer,solicitation or recommendation of any

(15:17):
funds, services or products, orto adopt any investment strategy.
This pod is marketing material issued bySchroder Investment Management Limited.
Registered number, 1893220.
Authorised and regulated by the FinancialConduct Authority for
informational purposes only.
Please contact your financial advisorbefore making any investment decisions.
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