Overview
The long-term growth of capital markets is dependent on how rapidly different constituents can expand and how much awareness or understanding the stakeholders have of critically important issues. In bond markets, evaluating fixed-income funds requires a structured framework that balances quantitative risk-adjusted performance with qualitative assessment. The quantitative screening phase begins by dissecting returns through fixed-income performance attribution and isolating performance generated by factors, such as duration management, yield curve positioning, sector allocation, and security selection. Important metrics of the fund, including duration, yield to maturity, credit quality, and liquidity, should be assessed across various interest rate shock and credit spread widening scenarios to ensure that the return profile aligns with its mandate.
In this webinar, the speaker will discuss key learnings on some of the issues that are related to fixed-income fund selection. He will also cover how to develop a more effective understanding of whether the manager’s strategy is top-down (macro-driven rate and curve calls) or bottom-up (credit analysis and relative value analysis), assessing whether the process is scalable across market cycles. Ultimately, robust manager research identifies whether outperformance stems from structural skill and analytical edge rather than unrewarded risk-taking or illiquidity exposure.
This webinar is worth 1 PL credit. If you are a CFA Institute member and attended live or watched the recording on your own time, you may self-report this activity in your tracker.
Learning Outcomes
- Learn how to design a robust and repeatable framework to select and monitor fixed-income managers that translates mandate intent into measurable constraints and success metrics and avoids product-first selection and peer-group traps.
- Discuss a method to separate manager skill from paid risks, including disentangling alpha from duration, spread beta, carry, liquidity, and leverage to confirm the manager is compensated for the risks taken (and is sized appropriately)
- Review the application of a consistent research framework (quantitative: return quality, exposures, attribution, and stress behaviour; qualitative: people, process, governance, risk culture) to implement and monitor with clear sell triggers.
Date and Time
29 September 2026, Tuesday
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM India Time
Speakers
Garish Kansal, CFA
