Five reasons to consider US short-duration high yield bonds

Amid the increasingly complex set of headwinds facing investors, a short duration high yield investment strategy can be designed with the aim of delivering a simple goal - generate stable, consistent income while minimising volatility and avoiding principal losses. 

The current market environment presents many challenges – from artificial intelligence disruption, higher energy prices, and renewed inflationary pressures, to concerns over monetary policy – but we believe a short duration approach within a high yield strategy can potentially deliver more predictable long-term outcomes.

Below, we highlight five key reasons why we believe US short-duration high yield bonds may offer a potentially attractive proposition within a broad asset allocation.

1. Navigating volatility with downside protection

Short-duration bonds tend to be less sensitive to interest rate changes than their longer-duration counterparts. Given the uncertain monetary policy outlook, we believe this may potentially offer investors some reassurance. But short duration on its own doesn’t necessarily mean lower volatility. 

Within a US high yield strategy, we believe the natural defensive characteristics which short duration bonds might possess – in terms of greater predictability and liquidity – are well suited towards a higher-quality approach, which could also offer protection against spread volatility.

In today’s environment, this approach may offer a nice balance of potential outcomes in a wide range of economic scenarios and potentially help protect investors against both interest rate volatility (driven by uncertainty around the impact on inflation and government deficits) and spread volatility (driven by uncertainty around the economy and default rate potential).

2. High liquidity offers greater optionality for investors

High yield bonds with shorter expected take-outs – which we define as anticipated refinancing or repayment in less than three years – offer natural liquidity. We consider that around one-third of today’s US high yield market, which has a total market value of some $1.5 trillion, fits into that addressable universe¹.

In addition, higher quality bonds within the short duration high yield universe, issued by companies with stronger balance sheets, may further help to enhance the liquidity profile. 

With significant growth in the amount of capital allocated to private markets in recent years, this liquidity combined with drawdown protection can potentially provide flexibility and more optionality for investors to balance with other exposures.

3. Potentially greater predictability amid AI disruption

Recently, we have seen fears over the potential disruptive impact of AI cause volatility within both public and private credit markets – notably amongst software companies. 

Even if concerns in some cases appear overdone, the uncertainty over AI’s long-term disruptive impact has reduced the amount of equity cushion behind some issuers’ bonds - so we believe some repricing is justified, particularly in more leveraged companies.

Given this backdrop, actively managed short duration strategies may potentially benefit from the greater predictability that comes with analysing AI disruption risks over a shorter time frame, relative to the greater uncertainty further out. 

However, we believe a bottom-up approach to identifying AI disruption impacts on each business will remain critical. By monitoring earnings, balance sheets, liquidity and access to capital markets, we aim to ensure that bonds will be refinanced by the underlying issuers in any scenario.

4. Capital availability to address near-term maturities has rarely been higher

An important reason why defaults have remained low in recent years is because companies today have access to multiple funding sources across leveraged finance (high yield bonds, leveraged loans and private credit), with financial solutions being offered even to more stressed issuers. 

Due to this abundant supply, we can see a degree of ‘security by maturity’ in many capital structures going through a more challenging period, in how shorter duration bonds trade relative to longer duration debt.  

We believe this is justified given that for many of these companies - not at imminent risk of default given their sufficient liquidity and free cash flow generation – the senior-most layers of debt financing were able to be addressed and refinanced, while the longer-maturity end has not experienced a similar recovery.

5. Yields remain attractive relative to full duration counterparts

As well as potentially offering resilience in the current environment, US short duration high yield may also provide plenty of opportunity in terms of yield/return potential. 

While there has been much focus recently on the changing shape of the US Treasury curve, the yield curve within US high yield has remained pretty flat. Yields on short-duration bonds may be comparable to those further out along the maturity spectrum, despite the lower duration. 

This means that US short duration high yield looks particularly attractive on a yield-per-unit-of-duration basis, even when managed with a more conservative approach. 

We believe this should potentially continue to produce a high capture of the overall US high yield market return if concerns about the macro or geopolitical environment are unfounded, and the market provides another year of healthy returns.

Looking further ahead

Putting aside how the shape of the Treasury yield curve may shift in reaction to the evolving geopolitical situation, questions persist around longer-duration sovereign debt yields. 

If the Federal Reserve chooses to focus on strengthening the economy by cutting rates rather than fighting inflation, then we could see further curve steepening with yields moving higher at the long end. 

At the same time, fiscal deficits have only begun to be called into question across most developed economies and the extent to which governments have the political will or ability to address spending is up for debate. Higher longer-duration sovereign yields may be the natural consequence as investors demand greater compensation for these fiscal risks. 

Although credit markets may be more insulated from these fiscal concerns, the case for short duration strategies or shorter maturity asset classes like high yield may certainly strengthen as a result.