Short Term
Discipline
MacKay Shields’ team orientation is fundamental to its investment process. In overweighting a particular sector, the Team must be confident that market conditions are conducive to success and that the risk- adjusted total return potential is greater than elsewhere. Emphasis on temporal dislocations and diversification of risk improves the likelihood of a sector’s outperformance. The first part of the investment process is the formulation of the outlook for the economy and overall climate for risk. The macro views are shaped by interest-rate and economic trends, broad emerging trends and themes, investor risk appetite, and general market tone. The top-level vision is executed across four dimensions of risk: rate, curves, volatility and credit.
Securities are usually sold if any of the following conditions are met:
- Our investment thesis is no longer intact.
- We believe the price of the security has moved such that it adequately reflects fair value.
- A security may be trading cheap to fair value, as indicated by wider spreads, but we believe that either the fundamentals or current market technicals may deteriorate further.
- A sector's spread volatility has risen insofar as it has impacted the tracking error of the portfolio, and we believe it is prudent to pare back our current risk exposure.
