As the post-pandemic rebound slows, investors are navigating rising inflationary pressure, tightening monetary policies, ongoing geopolitical risks, and the lingering threat of COVID-19 variants. A solid investment plan that takes all of these factors into consideration is essential for any portfolio hoping to adapt to the new normal.
In the upcoming webcast, Macro Polo: Finding the Right Investment Strategy For the Moment, Matthew Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas Research at State Street Global Advisors; Bryan Novak, senior managing director at Astor Investment Management; and Thomas Urano, managing partner, portfolio management at Sage Advisory, will outline allocation strategies to help financial advisors enhance their fixed-income and equity exposure and to better attune their clients’ investment portfolios to the current market environment.
Fixed-income investors who want to better control their exposure to the markets can turn to ETF strategies to target various bond segments. For instance, investors could complement existing credit positions in high-yield and investment-grade credit with alternatives like bank loans that access floating rates, move up the capital structure, and shorten duration exposure. The actively managed SPDR Blackstone/GSO Senior Loan ETF (SRLN) could help investors with better exposure, as a manager, it is more freely able to weave in and out of the fixed income market. Blackstone/GSO, which sub-advises SRLN, is backed by one of the world’s largest senior loan asset managers.
The SPDR Blackstone High Income ETF (HYBL) is also an actively managed strategy that seeks to provide risk-adjusted total return and high current income, with less volatility than the general bond and loan segments over full market cycles. HYBL invests in high-yield corporate bonds, senior loans, and debt tranches of US collateralized loan obligations (CLOs), utilizing a top-down asset allocation approach to determine the relative weights of each asset class, coupled with a bottom-up security selection process to build the portfolio.
The SPDR Portfolio Intermediate Term Corporate Bond ETF (SPIB) can allow investors to access the broad corporate debt markets. The ETF tracks the performance of U.S. corporate bonds that have a maturity of greater than or equal to 1 year and less than 10 years. The underlying benchmark, Bloomberg U.S. Intermediate Corporate Bond Index, is a component of the Bloomberg U.S. Corporate Index and includes investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable, U.S. dollar-denominated debt.
Investors can even look to the SPDR SSGA Ultra Short Term Bond ETF (ULST) to better control their exposure to interest rate risks. The SPDR SSGA Ultra Short Term Bond ETF seeks to maximize current income consistent with preservation of capital and daily liquidity through short-duration, high quality investments.
Financial advisors who are interested in learning more about investment strategies for the current market can register for the Wednesday, July 13 webcast here.