requires a thorough understanding of what is already priced into the markets.
As with relative value, a global value group operating independently of the funded
portfolios was established in 2000. The following year, an active overlay investment strategy went live. Taking views on macro factors such as duration and currencies did not have the same tradition from the management of the foreign exchange reserves, and the portfolio managers involved in macro and overlay strategies were mostly recruited externally. It diversified the approach for fixed-income management and aligned well with the investment philosophy of spreading active management across many independent positions.
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inclination to override the quantitative signals, and was discontinued in 2002.
The global value group put a lot of emphasis on disciplined position management. Each position had profit targets and loss limits. The stop-loss limit was a function of the expected profit and estimated risk of the trade, which produced a cone-shaped probability distribution over time. Every position had its performance chart with volatility bands around an expected profit trend line. When the line of the accumulated performance crossed any of the bands, closer scrutiny was warranted.
This helped the portfolio manager to cut losing positions and let winners run.
The position hit ratio and profitability profile were closely monitored across portfolio managers and strategies. As the hit ratio in macro strategies is, at best, expected to be slightly above 50 percent, portfolio managers were encouraged to increase the number of positions. Most of the added value from the macro trading in the global value group came out of strategies that played on the differences in short-term interest rates between some of the smaller currency markets.
The team was Oslo-based, and the number of portfolio managers in the team varied between two and six. In 2004, two of the team’s core members moved to Norges Bank’s office in London to sit closer to the information flow in global markets.
Global macro strategies
In 2005, the team was given new leadership and changed its name to Global Macro. The
experience of the new team was more tilted towards outright rates and currency trading. The goal was to fundamentally diversify the position types, reduce the number of positions, and extend the investment horizon. There was also Global value strategies
The global value team based its investment strategies on macro factors and broadened the scope of active management within fixed income. Considerable analysis went into understanding the reaction function of G10 central banks. The outcome of this analysis was a set of interest rate expectations compared to what was priced into the markets as per the interest rate term structure. The focus was on identifying pricing along the global yield curves that was not aligned with the expected central bank actions. Often, the positions were based on views across markets, as it was considered easier to identify relative mispricings between yield curves.
The active positions were spread across the G10 currency markets. The main strategies were outright short or long duration and positions on the yield curve in individual markets, and spread trades across currencies. The group was to a limited extent involved in currency trading, often through options. The investment horizon for the individual trading positions in global value was usually relatively short, typically three to four weeks. As with the relative value strategies, trades were executed independently of the underlying fixed-income portfolio. Positions to reflect the market views were mostly taken through derivatives, such as futures on short-term interest rates or government bonds. The use of liquid instruments was in line with the philosophy of putting on many positions and executing stop-loss rules when necessary.
In the early years, there was a separate effort to implement systematic strategies with the support of an external finance professor. Various quantitative signals were tested historically, and a subset were applied in a model portfolio that guided the position taking. The strategy suffered from a negative performance skew and an
89 Some of the strategies that added significant
value were outright short positions in seven-year Japanese government bonds in 2003, yield-curve-flattening trades in the US, and swap spread positions long German government bonds versus IRSs in 2004–2005. The yield curve position in the US was a broader version of the relative value off-the-run strategies in the 20-year sector of the US government bond curve. The active overlay group would try to capture the same yield premium as the relative value group but implemented the strategy with less fine-tuning in the hedging of interest rate risk. It would also put on interest rate and currency positions that were more concentrated and would require a longer holding period than typical for macro trades in other investment mandates.
The concept of a fixed-income overlay portfolio would persist through time and was still an active risk management tool at the end of 2020.
With more specialised mandates, the scope for overlay positions has expanded beyond high-conviction positions to include opportunities that cross the boundaries of the segments the other mandates operate in.
In 2005, a new hard-currency emerging market mandate was established as part of the active overlay mandate. The positions were divided into an active strategy and a beta exposure based on the JP Morgan EMBI Global Index. The active mandate would include positions in local currencies. The eligible country list was quite limited and included Poland, Hungary, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea. After phasing out the long/short mandate during the financial crisis and a period of preparation, Norges Bank returned to local-currency markets in 2011 and then on a much larger scale in 2012 when the segment was included in the benchmark.
an emphasis on increasing risk to contribute to an ever-larger fixed-income portfolio. Positions were classified into types of strategy and different time horizons: short, medium and long.
The risk and performance in the first year were driven by foreign exchange and outright interest rate positions, and to some extent on position taking within volatility.
In 2005, the group hired a portfolio manager specialising in high-frequency foreign exchange trading. Another team member had more of a quantitative background and was tasked with building a rule-based, or systematic, approach. In 2007, the systematic effort was strengthened and organised in a separate risk unit called Global Factors. This was a new attempt at a quantitative approach that sought exposure to various risk factors in a systematic and structured way. The initial focus was to extend the trend-following and mean-reversion models employed in the foreign exchange market to fixed income, equities and commodities. The Global Factors group was part of a new macro umbrella, including Global Macro and emerging market debt, headed by the CIO for fixed income.
Active overlay strategies
An active overlay portfolio was managed by the CIO for fixed income with support from senior portfolio managers. The focus was on extreme market situations with expectations of extraordinary or positively skewed profitability.
Positions in the active overlay portfolio would often be different versions or escalations of strategies in the separate teams. There were no explicit risk limits on positions or diversification requirements, but the risk in active overlay was not supposed to have a material impact on overall fixed-income performance. The risk in the active overlay portfolio would vary over time and be based on a limited number of positions.
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Chart 17
Macro and overlay strategies. Annual contribution, 2000-2007. Arithmetic difference in basis points.
-10
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Overlay Macro Chart 18
Macro and overlay strategies.
Cumulative contribution, 2000-2007.
Geometric difference in basis points.
-20
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Overlay Macro
Chart 17 Macro and overlay strategies. Annual contribu-tion, 2000–2007. Arithmetic difference in basis points.
Chart 18 Macro and overlay strategies. Cumulative contri-bution, 2000–2007. Geometric difference in basis points.
Chart 19
Macro and overlay strategies. Annual contribution, 2000-2007. Million kroner.
-1,200
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Overlay Macro Chart 20
Macro and overlay strategies.
Cumulative contribution, 2000-2007.
Million kroner.
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Overlay Macro
Chart 19 Macro and overlay strategies. Annual contribution, 2000–2007. Million kroner.
Chart 20 Macro and overlay strategies. Cumulative contribution, 2000–2007. Million kroner.
93 valued at 363 billion kroner, and it was estimated
that the size of the corporate bond portfolio would be around 100 billion kroner.
At the time, the US corporate bond market was substantially larger and more developed than corresponding markets in Europe and Asia, where banks were still the largest providers of debt financing to companies. Furthermore, the European market was still developing following the introduction of the single currency, which was a substantial adjustment for bond issuers and investors. Although the Ministry’s index used regional weightings which took the European share higher compared to North America, the benchmark was heavily tilted towards the US dollar market. As a result, the bulk of the corporate bonds purchased over the next few years were in this market.
Given the relative importance of the US market, a dedicated credit team was established in the fund’s New York office. In addition to the internal team, a few specialised mandates were issued to external managers. To facilitate corporate bond investments, the internal settlement team was expanded, and a new team was created to monitor the credit quality of the internal portfolios independently and ensure that they were managed in accordance with the mandate.
To account for a higher chance of the borrower not repaying the money lent, corporate bonds pay a higher rate of interest than government bonds. Over the long term, this extra risk for the lender should be compensated for in the form of higher returns. The portfolio of corporate bonds has grown to around 775 billion kroner, or close to 30 percent of the aggregated fixed-income portfolio.
Benchmark expansion
The Ministry selected the widely used Lehman Global Aggregate as the benchmark for fixed-income investments in 2002 to cover all the new sectors. The overall allocation to credit was a function of the size of the corporate bond market relative to other segments, based on market capitalisation. The benchmark did not include corporate bond markets in the Asia-Pacific region due to limited liquidity and low credit spreads.
The initial corporate bond index included close to 5,000 individual bonds issued by more than 900 companies with a median investment-grade rating from the major rating agencies. To allow some flexibility in the event of downgrades, the fund was permitted to hold bonds rated below investment grade up to a maximum of 5 percent of the total fixed-income portfolio. At the end of 2001, the fund’s fixed-income investments were