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Capitalising on the mispricing of BBB vs BB credit spreads

587960256

Scenario

Between January and October 2022, the S&P 500 declined 25%, while the five-year US Treasury rate rose significantly from 1.54% in January to 4.18% in October.1 Credit spreads were under pressure as the market worried about an impending recession caused by the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) tightening campaign. Benchmark-relative investment-grade credit managers generally appeared to be moving up in credit quality to minimise losses if a recession materialised. In our view, the up-in-quality rotation led investment-grade managers to sell BBB’s and buy single A’s. Meanwhile, high-yield managers were rotating from CCC’s into BB’s (the highest quality rating tier in high yield). This led to a compression in credit spreads between BB’s (high yield) and BBB’s (investment grade) to the tightest levels we had seen in 2022, despite elevated recessionary fears.

Investment team’s rationale2

During the summer of 2022, we found value in owning BB’s, compared to BBB’s. However, between September and November 2022, given the backdrop of spread compression between BBB’s and BB’s, we believed we could achieve similar levels of upside by owning BBB’s. We did not believe that the relative spread between the two quality tiers would tighten much further. Additionally, we felt owning BBB’s — instead of BB’s — would help us mitigate downside risk if the spread relationship between BBB’s and BB’s reverted to typical levels. We rotated approximately three years of spread duration from BB to BBB in this relative value trade. The trade performed well, with BBB’s having compressed more than BB’s as the credit spread relationship normalised.1