Canadian Core Plus Fixed Income

TD Asset Management Short Bond Plus Mortgage

At a Glance

We believe that a highly disciplined portfolio construction methodology is the most predictable way to generate competitive risk-adjusted returns when measured against any given benchmark. Our Bond Plus solutions seek to capture incremental excess returns over the long-term.

Expanding Opportunity Set

Extensive independent credit research.
Sound yield and credit curve analysis.
Strategic portfolio construction.

Structurally unbiased approach to credit risk.
Tactical flexibility to benefit through all market conditions.
Interest rate anticipation.
Sector strategy and security selection.

Philosophy and approach

We seek to provide enhanced returns while reducing total portfolio volatility, particularly in periods of equity stress. Through the integration of private real estate debt into fixed income portfolios, we seek to provide a diversified yield enhancement that takes on the role of portfolio stabilizer. Additional components of our bond plus strategies include mortgages and high-yield bonds.

Investment Process:

We actively manage our fixed income portfolios, using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis. Our multi-strategy approach aims to add value by targeting duration management, sector allocation and security selection. Fundamental analysis seeks to identify the current stage of the interest rate and credit cycle by examining economic and monetary conditions. This outlook sets the bias for interest rate, yield curve and credit positioning.

Technical analysis examines the supply and demand factors that are barometers of investor sentiment, allowing us to appropriately scale risk around our fundamental bias. Our unbiased approach allows the bond plus strategies to underweight credit risk as the economic cycle matures and reduces total portfolio downside deviation from market risks, such as equities, while enhancing returns through private debt integration.

ESG

Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) integration aligns with our philosophy of seeking investments in sustainable, long-term assets through a risk-managed process. We strive for a fully integrated ESG engagement process in our investment products.

Our Fundamental Equity Investment team integrates ESG factors directly into their investment analysis through a process involving the following central components:

Systematic ESG Reviews: We look at a number of ESG indicators that we believe apply to all industry sectors and elevate any issues that could put a company’s expected earnings at risk. Each company research report incorporates an ESG assessment, ensuring concerns around risk exposures are reviewed, updated and evaluated by our sector analysts.

Thematic ESG Research: We produce broad thematic ESG research on topics that have the potential to highly impact the companies in which we invest. We have found this to be the best way to highlight the structural changes to various sectors and impacts to the companies themselves.

Active Ownership. Our in-depth research helps our commitment to active ownership. We strive to be active owners by engaging with the companies in which we invest and by taking advantage of our voting rights to help effect change. Our intent is to both improve corporate ESG disclosures as well as improve companies' ESG-related practices.

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