A Checklist for Assessing Stable Value Funds

Since they are designed to protect investors against declines in interest rates or drops in asset values, stable value funds—and the “wrap issuers” that insure their portfolios of high-quality corporate and government bonds—have drawn considerable scrutiny from institutional investors amid the current market turmoil. Unlike the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, stable value managers are not […]

Structured Fixed Income vs. Derivatives: The Key Differences

In order to provide clarity about what can be an alphabet soup of names (CMBS? VIX?), this blog post provides an overview of how Callan categorizes two types of investment vehicles: structured fixed income products and derivatives.

Securities Lending 101

By Kyle Fekete and Mark Kinoshita As passive investing becomes a larger part of fund sponsors’ portfolios, investors are encouraged to look underneath the hood of their indexing strategies to evaluate securities lending. This has played an integral role in maintaining low fees (or a source of alpha) for index funds, which is especially critical […]

Non-U.S. Fixed Income: Separation Anxiety

View PDF Sovereign debt performed well in the first quarter amid political uncertainty about the future of the European Union (EU). Emerging market debt outperformed developed market debt for the third straight quarter as the JPM GBI-EM Global Diversified Index advanced 6.50% versus the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate ex-US Index’s 2.48% gain. Returns were bolstered […]