- The Fort Washington Strategic Income Strategy is a multi-sector fixed income strategy designed to provide investors with a high level of current income and total return with a focus on capital protection with differentiated returns compared to traditional fixed income.
- The strategy is differentiated in the market due to its premium yield, high conviction security selection, diversified approach to sector allocation, unique view of duration management, and high quality bias.
- Strategic Income provides investors with an expanded investment opportunity set and increased flexibility compared to traditional Core and Core Plus strategies.
- Fort Washington’s unique approach utilizes cause and effect relationships to assess relative value between asset classes and balances interest rate risk with credit risk. The strategy is implemented by an experienced team of 30+ investment professionals with proven track records overseeing +$50 billion in fixed income assets.1
- Our positive view on the current economy coupled with fair valuations supports an overweight to risk assets.
- The strategy has produced top decile performance since inception compared to its peers and has historically outperformed the Bloomberg Barclays Aggregate since inception.2
What Is the Fort Washington Strategic Income Strategy?
The Strategic Income strategy is a multi-sector fixed income strategy that seeks to produce a high level of current income and total return with a focus on capital protection through investing primarily in public fixed income securities. The strategy focuses on flexible sector diversification and high conviction security selection, resulting in attractive risk adjusted returns via multiple sources of yield and alpha.
What Differentiates Strategic Income From Other Multi-Asset Fixed Income Strategies?
Premium Yield. Strategic Income has a top quintile yield relative to its peers, and the yield is well above traditional fixed income strategies (typically 2% over the Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate).3
High Conviction Security Selection. Bottom-up security selection in fixed income has proven to be a reliable source of alpha. Strategic Income is a portfolio of typically 125 – 175 issuers, focusing on the best ideas of our investment teams.
Sector Diversification. Non-traditional fixed income strategies often have large concentrations in a single sector, such as high yield or preferred securities. Strategic Income is broadly diversified by sector, resulting in multiple sources of return.
Duration Management. Unconstrained fixed income strategies take large, and sometimes negative, duration positions. Strategic Income uses duration as a risk mitigation tool, and seeks to avoid taking large duration positions due to the difficulty in predicting interest rates.
Quality Bias. Strategic Income has a top quintile yield without taking excessive risks. The average credit quality of the holdings in the strategy is Investment Grade rated, while the average credit quality of most portfolios in the peer group is rated as High Yield.
Why Invest in the Strategy Today?
Higher Yield. For investors looking for increased yield, Strategic Income, on average, is likely to provide a yield in excess of the Bloomberg Barclays US Aggregate by 2%,4 higher than most traditional strategies.
Expanded Opportunity Set. Traditional strategies are largely invested in sectors and securities that are represented in common market indices. Strategic Income goes beyond common market indices into areas that may be less trafficked, providing more opportunities for alpha.
Portfolio Diversification. Traditional strategies are often invested in the major index sectors of Investment Grade Corporates, Securitized, and Government Securities. Strategic Income provides dedicated exposure to diversifying fixed income asset classes with low correlation to traditional fixed income strategies.
What is the Investment Process
| 1) Risk Appetite Determine how much risk to take |
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| 2) Sector Allocation Identify optimal sector combinations |
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| 3) Security Selection Perform fundamental analysis |
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How Is Relative Value Between Asset Classes Assessed?
The Fort Washington Strategic Income strategy takes a value investors approach to investing. This means the strategy focuses on measurement, not forecasting, and makes explicit measurements of risk and return. For each asset class, we make return estimates for two scenarios: growth shock, or recession, and normalized, or upside. Once these estimates of risk and return are made, it allows for an apples to apples comparison of the risk-adjusted attractiveness between different asset classes.
This forward looking approach based on cause and effect relationships is differentiated in the market place, where most investors use traditional relative value and risk metrics involving historical correlations and volatility.
How Is Interest Rate Duration Managed?
Who Manages the Strategy?
* Includes assets under management as of 12/31/2020 by Fort Washington Investment Advisors, Inc. of $65.1 billion and $4.3 billion in commitments managed by Fort Washington Capital Partners Group, a division. ** Registration as an investment advisor does not imply any level of skill or training.
How Is the Portfolio Positioned Today?
Allocation. The strategy entered 2020 near the lower end of its risk target as valuations were expensive across most sectors and the economy was in the late stages of the cycle. This conservative positioning at the start of the year, coupled with the flexible investment approach of the strategy, allowed the team to be active buyers at a time when market participants were overwhelmingly sellers in March and April. The strategy invested approximately 25% of the portfolio across High Yield, Investment Grade Credit, and select Public Equities at deeply discounted prices during that time. These allocations were a positive for performance as market functionality was restored and asset prices continued to recover throughout the year. Although valuations appear fairly valued at this point, our positive economic outlook warrants an above average target to risk within the portfolio. The largest sector allocations as of quarter end were Investment Grade Credit (23%) and High Yield (24%). Non-investment grade exposure is currently 42% compared to 27% at the start of the year and below the 50% target maximum. The portfolio has ample liquidity to take advantage of market opportunities with 17% invested in U.S. Government securities and cash.
Selection. Within investment grade credit, we favor less cyclical sectors such as utilities, healthcare and financials with an overweight to discount floating rate notes. Our High Yield exposure is a balance of highest convictions ideas and broad market and sector exposure. Within Securitized, our exposure is concentrated in whole business ABS, non-agency CMBS, and CLO opportunities where we believe risk is mispriced. Emerging Market Debt positioning is in US Dollar denominated debt, favoring corporate borrowers versus sovereign. We continue to like Business Development Companies, which provides exposure to middle market loans with significant yield premiums to public markets.
Rates. We believe interest rates are fully valued in the near term and reflect the improving economic outlook and policy response of the Fed, but are likely to move modestly higher throughout the year. The Strategic Income strategy is naturally less sensitive to interest rates compared to traditional fixed income strategies. Our current interest rate positioning is less a prediction on interest rates, but more used as a risk mitigation tool as we look to balance interest rate risk and credit risk. Absent a severe inflationary environment, moderate interest rate exposure provides important downside protection should risks materialize and risk assets underperform.
Portfolio Characteristics (As of 12/31/2020)5
- Weighted Average Yield to Worst: 3.6%
- Effective Duration: 3.9
- Weighted Average Maturity: 6.9
- Number of Issuers: 150
| Credit Quality (% of Fixed Income) |
Credit Quality % | Sector Allocation | sector allocation % |
|---|---|---|---|
| AAA | 22% | Investment Grade Credit | 23% |
| AA | 2% | High Yield Corp | 24% |
| A | 5% | U.S. Treasuries | 15% |
| BBB |
35% |
Securitized | 18% |
| BB | 16% | Emerging Markets Debt | 9% |
| B | 17% | Private Debt/BDCs | 4% |
| CCC and Below | 3% | Public Equity | 4% |
| Cash | 3% |
1 Assets as of 12/31/2020, across multiple strategies.
² Inception date of 7/1/2017. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Peer rankings are based on gross performance relative to the Morningstar US Multi-Sector Bond Universe.
3 Source: Morningstar Multisector Bond Universe and Intermediate-Term Bond Universe as of 12/31/2020.
4 Source: Bloomberg, Fort Washington.
5 Source: Fort Washington and Bloomberg PORT. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Portfolio characteristics subject to change at any time without notice. Supplemental information, Strategic Income GIPS report for full performance and disclosures is available upon request.
Assets as of 12/31/2020. Includes assets under management by Fort Washington of $65.1 billion and $4.3 billion in commitments managed by Fort Washington Capital Partners Group (FW Capital), a division.
This publication has been distributed for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy, or investment product. Information and statistics contained herein have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable but are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete. Neither Fort Washington nor its sources for the content herein are responsible for any damages or losses arising from the use of this information. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission of Fort Washington.
