Any portfolio that is mandated to only
hold investment grade debt or above will no longer be able to hold that bond and the resulting selling may drive down the price of that bond.
Not exact matches
So if a company is drowning in
debt and has little capacity to pay it back, its bonds will get a junk rating and they won't make into indexes that
hold only
investment -
grade issues.
Many investors will never want to venture outside
investment grade debt (BBB or higher) and will only find themselves
holding bonds which are considered junk after the
debt has had its credit rating downgraded.
The actual downgrade to junk status usually drives more selling pressure, particularly from funds that are restricted to
holding investment -
grade debt exclusively.
If investors grow anxious about
holding low - quality bonds, they may trade them for the higher - quality
debt, such as government bonds and
investment -
grade corporate bonds.
If investors grow anxious about
holding low - quality bonds, they may trade them for the highest - quality
debt, such as U.S. Treasuries and
investment -
grade corporate bonds.
Our research on the Fundamental Index ® concept, as applied to bonds, underscores the widely
held view in the bond community that we should not choose to own more of any security just because there's more of it available to us.10 Figure 9 plots four different Fundamental Index portfolios (weighted on sales, profits, assets and dividends) in
investment -
grade bonds (green), high - yield bonds (blue) and emerging markets sovereign
debt (yellow).11 Most of these have lower volatility and higher return than the cap - weighted benchmark (marked with a red dot).
One challenge in spinning off its gas network into a separate company and making it attractive to investors was the amount of
debt it could
hold relative to its assets — it would need to be higher than the energy regulator's limit, while at the same time needing to maintain an
investment -
grade credit rating so it could benefit from cheaper borrowing costs.