All insights

Ben Hayward looks at the Q2 performance for Asset Backed Securities and provides an outlook for the year ahead.

Chris Bowie looks at the performance of the Outcome Driven strategy over the last quarter and provides his outlook for the rest of 2018.

Mark Holman discusses Q2 performance for the Strategic Income strategy and looks forward to the rest of the year.

The area that caused the most concern in the Q1 report was the big drop in availability of unsecured credit to households; however, availability was unchanged in Q2, thanks in particular to a change in appetite for risk from lenders, and also an improvement in market share objectives.

In the past two years the diversity of supply in the ABS market has been restricted by the availability of cheaper funding alternatives, both in the Eurozone through the TLTRO and in the UK, where the BoE Term Funding Scheme has suppressed issuance from the traditional banks and building societies.

It’s been an interesting week for European CLOs; one of our favourite picks in fixed income. 

Credit metrics, as measured by the rating agencies, continued to improve throughout the first half of this year, with all corners of the globe having comfortably more upgrades than downgrades.

The last ten year period has seen supply from various parts of the ABS market ebb and flow.

Today sees the launch of the first dedicated Additional Tier 1 Exchange Traded Fund. As first mover, Invesco Powershares gets to claim the simplest ticker, AT1 LN.

We woke today to the ironic news that on the same morning that Greece struck a deal with Eurozone authorities to ease its repayment obligations, another borrower, who also manged to ease its obligations a few years ago, has now decided to return to the markets with a new issue.

Following central bank commentary and actions has been a really useful source of information in the post global financial crisis world; however, closer to home here in the UK the commentary and the actions have been less consistent than those coming from either the Fed or the ECB.

For many years ABS has primarily been used as a funding tool for banks and other lenders.