A $120 Billion Danish Pension Manager Loses Faith in Bonds
In one of the world’s best-run pension markets, the biggest commercial manager says it’s time to dump bonds.
“The switch out of fixed income into broader equities, whether it’s listed or unlisted, is what we recommend and what we are positioned for,” Kasper Lorenzen, chief investment officer at Copenhagen-based PFA, said in an interview.
Back when most asset managers were being taught the trade, “we learned that government bonds are the safe assets, the risk-free asset,” he said. “Well, let’s see in a year or two what is really the risk-free asset. That transformation is definitely going on.”
The $120 billion pensions manager points to the flood of issuance to finance pandemic relief packages as a key reason why bonds are losing their allure. Mass issuance has also upended the in-tandem moves in stocks and bonds that had dominated markets after the last financial crisis. What’s more, it’s now clear that central banks are content to let the long end of the yield curve move considerably higher.
“I’m just surprised how quickly things have changed,” Lorenzen said. “I would have thought that inflation-rate expectations and also interest rates would have been a little bit more anchored.”
Read more @Bloomberg
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