Large asset management groups are piling back into fixed income to lock in the higher yields on offer after a “cataclysmic” period of performance for bonds last year.
A steep rise in US interest rates over the past 12 months sent bond prices tumbling but has now left yields on Treasury notes higher than they have been for most of the past decade. With the Federal Reserve close to the end of its tightening cycle, institutional and retail investors are buying both sovereign and corporate bonds.
“Bonds are exciting again, for the first time in a long time. They were boring with zero rates for several years,” Sebastien Page, chief investment officer of T Rowe Price’s global multi-asset strategy, told the Financial Times.