Investment Process
We believe our uniquely collaborative, research-driven approach to fixed-income investment offers the best opportunity to achieve consistent, superior long-term performance on a risk-adjusted basis across the full range of market environments.

The Fixed Income Strategy Committee, the research analysts, and the sector teams collaborate to identify the best opportunities in the fixed-income arena and to manage risk in our portfolios.

Our incentive structure encourages a team-based approach by rewarding cooperation among team members along with the real-world success of the investment portfolios.

Our approach is objective and allows our investment teams to adopt one strategy over another as market conditions change.

The Core Plus strategy offers the opportunity to enhance returns and reduce risk by exploiting tactical and strategic opportunities outside traditional domestic fixed-income sectors, including high-yield corporates, emerging markets, and nondollar-denominated foreign bonds.

Portfolio Focus

The Fixed Income Strategy Committee, comprised of the leaders of sector teams and research areas, is ultimately responsible for strategic portfolio allocation. It determines the allocations based on our broad outlook for the economy and fixed-income market.

Having first provided sector-specific analysis to the committee, the sector teams implement the committee’s decisions. The teams are responsible for security selection, trading, and daily risk management.

Four main strategies drive performance:

Security selection – within both core and noncore sectors

Sector rotation – traditional core sectors

Yield-curve positioning

Strategic and tactical noncore sector allocations

Fundamental and quantitative researchers take part in every step of strategic planning, security selection, and portfolio oversight process. Credit research supports the selection of individual securities, while quantitative modeling provides a layer of analysis and control.

Portfolio Composition
The Core Plus strategy seeks to generate returns in excess of those available to core bond market investors by further diversifying the core bond portfolio to include:

High-yield bonds

Emerging-market bonds

Nondollar-denominated bonds