EDHEC Publications
Factor Investing in Fixed-Income – Defining and Exploiting Value in Sovereign Bond Markets
2019
Value has been recognised as one of the most important factors for equities since the pioneering work by Fama and MacBeth (1973). In equities, the book-to-market value ratio has traditionally been used as a proxy for the value factor. Natural as this choice is for this asset class, it is difficult to translate the concept of value to the fixed-income domain. In this paper, “Factor Investing in Fixed-Income – Defining and Exploiting Value in Sovereign Bond Markets”, we propose a definition of value in Treasury bonds that, we believe, is more satisfactory than definitions found in the recent...
Factor Investing in Fixed-Income - Cross-Sectional and Time-Series Momentum in Sovereign Bond Markets
2019
Looking at momentum in fixed-income markets at the security level is very important, because studies that employ ‘synthetic’ zero-coupon bonds can be vitiated by the well-known serial autocorrelation of pricing errors, which can masquerade as a momentum effect. To our knowledge, no empirical study of momentum in Treasuries has looked at the problem at this level of granularity. In this paper, “Factor Investing in Fixed-Income – Cross-Sectional and Time-Series Momentum in Sovereign Bond Markets”, we undertake a systematic, security-level analysis of momentum and reversal strategies in US...
Factor Investing in Sovereign Bond Markets – A Time-Series Perspective
2019
This paper has been produced as part of the "ETF, Indexing and Smart Beta Investment Strategies" Research Chair at EDHEC-Risk Institute, in partnership with Amundi. Following up on more than a decade-long research effort in the area of factor investing in equity markets, we have felt a timely need amongst asset owners and asset managers to gain a better understanding of the theoretical and practical challenges involved in harvesting risk premia in fixed-income markets. This paper “Factor Investing in Sovereign Bond Markets – A Time-Series Perspective” provides a detailed analysis of the...
Predicting Risk Premia for Treasury Bonds: The ERI Risk Premium Monitor
2017
Investors in the Treasury market often observe an upward-sloping yield curve.1 This means that, by assuming ‘duration risk’, they can very often invest at a higher yield than their funding cost. Yet, if the Expectation Hypothesis held true — if, that is, the steepness of the yield curve purely reflected expectations of future rising rates — no money could on average be made from this strategy. This prompts the obvious question: When does the steepness of the yield curve simply reflects expectations of rising rates, and when does it embed a substantial risk premium?
Catastrophe Bonds: An Important New Financial Instrument
2014
This paper describes key features of catastrophe bonds or CAT bonds. CAT bonds are issued by a reinsurer for indemnification against tail risks of a major disaster such as a hurricane, earthquake, or pandemic. The money with which investors purchase CAT bonds is deposited in safe securities such as US Treasuries. The investor then receives interest on these securities plus premiums paid regularly by the issuer of the bond. If a “triggering event” (the covered catastrophe) occurs before maturity the bond may “default” in that investors may not be returned part or all of their principal, which...
Do Multiple Credit Ratings Signal Complexity? Evidence from the European Triple-A Structured Finance Securities
2014
In much of the current research on market practices with respect to the use of credit ratings, the rating shopping hypothesis and the information production hypothesis feature prominently. Both of these hypotheses predict an inverse relationship between the number of ratings and a security’s funding cost; that is, more ratings will reduce funding costs and, conversely, fewer ratings will increase funding costs. This study finds precisely the opposite to have been the case for the mainstay of the structured finance securities market in Europe prior to 2007, namely the triple-A tranches of...
Related Securities and Equity Market Quality: The Case of CDS
2013
We document that the emergence of markets for single-name credit default swap (CDS) contracts adversely affects equity market quality. The finding that firms with traded CDS contracts on their debt have less liquid equity and less efficient stock prices is robust across a variety of market quality measures and to controlling for endogeneity. We analyse the potential mechanisms driving this result and find evidence consistent with negative trader-driven information spillovers that result from the introduction of CDS.
Reactions to "A Review of Corporate Bond Indices: Construction Principles, Return Heterogeneity, and Fluctuations in Risk Exposures"
2013
The results of a call for reaction conducted to help gather evidence on investor perceptions of the issues related to corporate bond indexing, further to the EDHEC-Risk Institute study published in 2011 that found highly unstable risk exposure, and notably highly unstable duration, across eight indices through time, in the eurozone and the US, and with heightened instability in two so-called “investable” indices.
Reactions to the EDHEC Study “Optimal Design of Corporate Market Debt Programmes in the Presence of Interest-Rate and Inflation Risks”
2012
EDHEC-Risk Institute has conducted extensive research into advanced debt management practices, including a study on the possibility of increasing firm value through the issuance of an optimal level of inflation-linked bonds, which would allow for a reduction in the variability of cash flows, net of debt costs.
The Link between Eurozone Sovereign Debt and CDS Prices
2012
This paper performs a theoretical and empirical analysis of the relationship between the price of Eurozone sovereign-linked credit default swaps (CDS) and the same sovereign bond markets during the Eurozone debt crisis of 2009-2011. It first presents a simple model which establishes the no-arbitrage relationship between CDS and bond yield spreads. A revisited version of this paper was published in the March 2012 issue of Bankers, Markets & Investors.
Bond Liquidity Premia
2011
Asset pricing models of limits to arbitrage emphasize the role of funding conditions faced by financial intermediaries. In the US, the Treasury repo market is the key funding market and, hence, theory predicts that the liquidity premium of Treasury bonds share a funding liquidity component with risk premia in other markets. This paper identifies and measures the value of funding liquidity from the cross-section of bonds by adding a liquidity factor correlated with age to an arbitrage-free term structure model. A revisited version of this paper was published in the April 2012 issue of The...
Force-fitting CDS Spreads to CDS Index Swaps
2011
Issues of contemporaneity, liquidity, different restructuring clauses and market supply and demand, all contribute to the fact that the market quoted term structure of CDS index spreads does not always agree with the term structure of CDS index spreads implied by the CDS term structures of the constituent credits. A revisited version of this paper was published in the Spring 2011 issue of the Journal of Derivatives.
A Review of Corporate Bond Indices: Construction Principles, Return Heterogeneity, and Fluctuations in Risk Exposures
2011
This paper analyses two sets of four corporate investment-grade bond indices each, one for the US market and the other for the euro-denominated bond market. First, we review the uses of bond indices as well as the challenges involved. We then analyse the risk-return properties and the heterogeneity of the indices in each set. Although the indices in each market resemble each other, there are still some differences. Moreover, an analysis of the stability of the indices’ risk exposures (interest rate and credit risks) reveals very unstable measures over time and, perhaps most importantly, this...
Optimal Design of Corporate Market Debt Programmes in the Presence of Interest-Rate and Inflation Risks
2011
This paper provides a joint quantitative analysis of capital structure decisions and debt structure decisions within a standard continuous-time capital-structure model. In the presence of interest rate and inflation risks, we are able to obtain quasi-closed form expressions for the price of various forms of indexed- and non-indexed bonds issued by the firm, which allows us to generate computationally efficient estimates for the optimal debt structure. Our analysis shows that debt-structure decisions have a strong impact on capital structure decisions. It also suggests that substantial...
Shedding Light on Alternative Beta : A Volatility and Fixed Income Asset Class Comparison
2007
Volatility is an alternative beta—a risk premium captured by hedge fund managers and investment bank proprietary traders—that is today moving closer to the mainstream and should be thought of as a veritable asset class. For many investors, it is difficult to derive intuition as to why volatility should deserve an ongoing allocation within a larger portfolio. If volatility is an asset class, then to what accepted asset class can it be compared?
A Copula Approach to Value-at-Risk Estimation for Fixed-Income Portfolios
2007
This paper introduces a multivariate copula approach to Value-at-Risk estimation for fixed income portfolios. Using a parsimonious model to extract time-varying parameters used as proxies for factors affecting the shape of the yield curve, and a Student copula to model the dependence structure of these factors, we are able to generate VaR estimates that strongly dominate standard VaR estimates in formal out-of-sample tests. A revisited version of this paper was published in the Summer 2007 issue of the Journal of Fixed Income.
Derivatives Strategies for Bond Portfolios
2006
In this paper, the authors examine how standard exchange-traded fixed-income derivatives (futures and options on futures contracts) can be included in a sound risk and asset management process so as to improve risk and return performance characteristics of managed portfolios. The results show that the non-linear character of the returns on protective option strategies offers appealing risk reduction properties in the pure asset management context. Consequently, such strategies should optimally receive a significant allocation, especially when investors are concerned with minimising extreme...
From Delivering to the Packaging of Alpha
2005
In this paper, "From Delivering to the Packaging of Alpha. Illustration from Active Bond Portfolio Management: Using Fixed-Income Derivatives to Design Hedge Fund Type Offerings that Better Fit Investors’ Needs", the authors emphasize the need for the hedge fund industry to adopt a consumer (investor)-driven approach, as opposed to the current producer (manager) perspective, and call for the emergence of new types of offering with characteristics better suited to the needs of institutional investors. Using active bond portfolio management as an example, they present evidence on the use of...
Exploiting Predictability in the Time-Varying Shape of the Term Structure of Interest Rates
2005
This paper presents evidence of predictability in the time-varying shape of the U.S. term structure of interest rates using a robust recursive modelling approach based on a Bayesian mixture of multi-factor models. We find that variables such as default spread, equity volatility, short-term and forward rates, among others, can be used to predict changes in the slope of the yield curve, and also, albeit to a lesser extent, changes in the curvature of the yield curve. By using systematic trading strategies based on butterfly swaps, we also find that this evidence of predictability in the shape...
The Benefits of Bond ETFs for Institutional Investors - The Natural Vehicle for a Core-Satellite Approach
2004
Recent market difficulties have drawn attention to the risk management practices of institutional investors. Particularly significant was the fact that negative equity market returns were eroding plan assets at the same time as declining interest rates were increasing benefit obligations. These events have spotlighted the weakness of current funding standards for corporate defined benefit pension plans. They have also emphasized the weakness of investment practices.
Be Active with your Bond Trackers
2004
Newly launched fixed-income Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) have specifically been designed to track bond market indices, and share many of the same benefits of equity ETFs, including in particular lower costs, transparency, buying and selling flexibility, all day tracking and trading. While it has often been argued that ETFs were natural investment vehicles for implementing passive indexing strategies, we show in this paper that the benefits of ETFs are actually much larger than traditionally reported, as these instruments can also be used to implement almost the full range of existing...
Evidence of Predictability in Bond Indices and Implications for Fixed-Income Tactical Style Allocation Decisions
2003
There is now a consensus in empirical finance that expected asset returns, and also variances and covariances, are, to some extent, predictable. The use of predetermined variables to predict asset returns has produced new insights into asset pricing models, and the literature on optimal portfolio selection has recognized that these insights can be exploited to improve on existing policies based upon unconditional estimates. While the performance of tactical style allocation models is well documented in equity markets, very little evidence is available on the performance of systematic dynamic...
About EDHEC
Operating from campuses in Lille, Nice, Paris, London and Singapore, EDHEC is one of the world’s top 15 business schools. Fully international and directly connected to the business world, EDHEC commands a strong reputation for research excellence and the ability to train entrepreneurs and managers capable of breaking new ground. EDHEC functions as a genuine laboratory of ideas and produces innovative solutions valued by businesses. The School’s teaching is inspired by its research work and a focus on “learning by doing”, all with the aim of equipping people with the skills to succeed in business.
