Bond investing heads back to the old normal

Inflation is not beaten and rates may rise further. But high-grade bonds can still provide steady income and low risk, playing a new old role in investor portfolios.

In May, Nedgroup Investments, a fund manager with $20 billion of assets under management, announced a multi-boutique platform for active managers to offer new strategies to investors.

The first of these, likely to launch later this year, will be a bond fund managed by David Roberts – a veteran manager who headed fixed income at Liontrust until the end of last year and before that spent 14 years at Aegon Asset Management – and Alex Ralph, a former partner of Artemis Investment Management, where she helped set up the bond desk and launched the strategic bond fund in 2005.

It is not the prospect of a quick pivot by central banks that has drawn the pair back to the markets.

David Roberts-960.jpg
David Roberts, Nedgroup

Rather, it is the notion that rates will remain higher for longer, that inflation will be sticky, and that high-grade bonds will return to being a low-risk, steady income-producing asset class.

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