Richard S. Hunt on the adjustment of fixed income strategy under the expectation of Fed rate cut

Richard S. Hunt, head of global equity sales at CSC Bella Grove Partners LLC, recently released the “White Paper on Fixed Income Strategies in the Monetary Policy Turning Period”, which provides institutional investors with a systematic solution to cope with the downward interest rate environment. Hunt pointed out that the traditional single strategy of “extending duration” can no longer adapt to the new monetary policy environment, and a dynamically responsive compound income structure must be established.

The “Policy Inflection Point Response Model” developed by the Hunt team reveals three-stage opportunities: short-term focus on yield curve steepening transactions, increase holdings of 2-5 year Treasury futures; medium-term capture of investment-grade corporate bond credit spread compression dividends, focus on industry leaders with potential for rating upgrades; long-term allocation of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) to obtain early repayment risk premium. The model innovatively introduces a “volatility adjustment mechanism” that automatically converts part of the position into inflation-protected bonds (TIPS) when the implied volatility of interest rate options exceeds the threshold.

CSC Bella Grove has transformed the model into an “intelligent duration navigation system” to track the deviation between the Fed’s policy signals and market pricing in real time. Data shows that the portfolio using this system has an excess return of 3.5% over the benchmark index in simulation tests, and the interest rate risk exposure is reduced by 40%. Hunt emphasized: “The real alpha comes from the grasp of the lag effect of policy transmission, rather than simply betting on the timing of interest rate cuts.” This innovation is changing the asset-liability management logic of pension funds and insurance companies, and the concept of “policy options” proposed by it has become a new analytical paradigm in the field of fixed income.