On the Efficacy of Shorting Corporate Bonds as a Tail Risk Hedging Solution

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Cable, Travis, Mani, Amir, Qi, Wei, Sotiropoulos, Georgios, Xiong, Yiyuan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Cable, Travis
Mani, Amir
Qi, Wei
Sotiropoulos, Georgios
Xiong, Yiyuan
author_facet Cable, Travis
Mani, Amir
Qi, Wei
Sotiropoulos, Georgios
Xiong, Yiyuan
contents United States (US) IG bonds typically trade at modest spreads over US Treasuries, reflecting the credit risk tied to a corporation's default potential. During market crises, IG spreads often widen and liquidity tends to decrease, likely due to increased credit risk (evidenced by higher IG Credit Default Index spreads) and the necessity for asset holders like mutual funds to liquidate assets, including IG credits, to manage margin calls, bolster cash reserves, or meet redemptions. These credit and liquidity premia occur during market drawdowns and tend to move non-linearly with the market. The research herein refers to this non-linearity (during periods of drawdown) as downside convexity, and shows that this market behavior can effectively be captured through a short position established in IG Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The following document details the construction of three signals: Momentum, Liquidity, and Credit, that can be used in combination to signal entries and exits into short IG positions to hedge a typical active bond portfolio (such as PIMIX). A dynamic hedge initiates the short when signals jointly correlate and point to significant future hedged return. The dynamic hedge removes when the short position's predicted hedged return begins to mean revert. This systematic hedge largely avoids IG Credit drawdowns, lowers absolute and downside risk, increases annualised returns and achieves higher Sortino ratios compared to the benchmark funds. The method is best suited to high carry, high active risk funds like PIMIX, though it also generalises to more conservative funds similar to DODIX.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_06289
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle On the Efficacy of Shorting Corporate Bonds as a Tail Risk Hedging Solution
Cable, Travis
Mani, Amir
Qi, Wei
Sotiropoulos, Georgios
Xiong, Yiyuan
Portfolio Management
Risk Management
United States (US) IG bonds typically trade at modest spreads over US Treasuries, reflecting the credit risk tied to a corporation's default potential. During market crises, IG spreads often widen and liquidity tends to decrease, likely due to increased credit risk (evidenced by higher IG Credit Default Index spreads) and the necessity for asset holders like mutual funds to liquidate assets, including IG credits, to manage margin calls, bolster cash reserves, or meet redemptions. These credit and liquidity premia occur during market drawdowns and tend to move non-linearly with the market. The research herein refers to this non-linearity (during periods of drawdown) as downside convexity, and shows that this market behavior can effectively be captured through a short position established in IG Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). The following document details the construction of three signals: Momentum, Liquidity, and Credit, that can be used in combination to signal entries and exits into short IG positions to hedge a typical active bond portfolio (such as PIMIX). A dynamic hedge initiates the short when signals jointly correlate and point to significant future hedged return. The dynamic hedge removes when the short position's predicted hedged return begins to mean revert. This systematic hedge largely avoids IG Credit drawdowns, lowers absolute and downside risk, increases annualised returns and achieves higher Sortino ratios compared to the benchmark funds. The method is best suited to high carry, high active risk funds like PIMIX, though it also generalises to more conservative funds similar to DODIX.
title On the Efficacy of Shorting Corporate Bonds as a Tail Risk Hedging Solution
topic Portfolio Management
Risk Management
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06289