Reading time: 4 minutes
Given current sharemarket instability, we have received a number of questions regarding risk management and how to reduce portfolio volatility in times of market distress. Many of our investors have constructed well-balanced portfolios which incorporate fixed income as a counterweight to equities, but still would like an element of risk management for the equities component of their portfolio.

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Written by Christopher Joye, Chief Investment Officer, Coolabah Capital Investors, Manager for HBRD
A dramatic increase in credit spreads in major bank hybrids presents investors with the potential for attractive gains
Amidst the current market turmoil, ASX-listed hybrids have been one of the more liquid and transparently-traded parts of the fixed income markets.

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The global financial system has experienced a month of chaos as the surge in cases of COVID-19 around the world has sent markets into freefall. Increasing rates of infection, reactive policy responses enforcing lockdowns, and declining sharemarkets appear to have set global economies on the path to recession.

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Key Global Trends – equities slump
The coronavirus-led ‘risk-off’ trade that started to build in late January continued into March, with the MSCI All-Country World Equity return index declining by 12.8% in local currency terms. Despite declining government bond yields, the yield on the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index actually edged up from 1.07% to 1.17% in the month –

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Trading volumes in BetaShares’ three Bear equity Funds have increased dramatically as investors seek to protect themselves against – or profit from – falls in the U.S. or Australian sharemarkets.
A number of individuals have contacted us with questions around price movements in these funds, and how they relate to movements in the underlying market.

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Sharemarkets have been in turmoil for several weeks, with few portfolios unaffected and volatility at all time highs. As a result, we’ve received many questions from investors relating to their ETF investments. We thought we’d use this post to provide answers to 4 of the most common:

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ETF INDUSTRY CATCHES A COLD…AND TRADES UP A STORM
After 14 straight months of growth, the Australian ETF industry encountered a rare month of negative growth in February. After starting the year with a bang, industry FuM fell by $2.0B (-3.1% MoM decline) to end February at $64.0B.

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Key Global Trends – equities retreat
The coronavirus-led ‘risk-off’ trade that started to build in late January continued into February and the early weeks of March. Global equities have reversed their uptrend* seen through most of 2019, while the downtrend in bond yields and uptrend in gold prices has continued.

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Fears around the impact of the coronavirus have been compounded by oil’s woes, causing the biggest falls on Wall Street since the GFC. On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 7.6%, triggering the first automatic halt in trading in more than two decades,

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On 28 February, the Australian dollar fell below US$0.65, its lowest point since the GFC. As the chart below shows, the AUD remains in a short and long-term downtrend against the USD that currently shows no signs of abating.
AUD vs. USD: 5 March 2018 to 4 March 2020

Source: www.xe.com.

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