Morningstar: Four bond funds where rising valuations have led managers to take risk off the table

Difficulty in finding attractively priced bonds

Ashis Dash, associate director, fixed income manager research at Morningstar, looks at the number of bond managers that de-risked their portfolios towards year-end 2017 and heading into 2018.

A key reason behind bond managers de-risking their portfolios towards the end of 2017 was their view that market valuations were rich, and they expressed difficulty in finding bonds that were attractively priced. This is an issue that has become more and more pronounced as investors have snapped up bonds with (remotely) attractive yields, driving up their prices; not to mention the impact of central banks, such as the European Central Bank and Bank of England, through their bond buying programmes. BlackRock expands high yield range with fixed maturity bond fund Some funds that we c...