• Investing is inherently complex. U.S. Treasury yields far below longer-term averages and compressed credit market spreads make fixed income challenging. Equity can generate attractive returns, and considerable volatility. Market Insights is Thornburg’s window into how we think about risk, reward and the myriad factors that drive risk-adjusted returns.

    • Market Insights

    Thorough analyses of trends & changes influencing the markets.
  • The Perils of Inflexible, Formulaic Investing
    June 24, 2019 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    As downward pressure on negative bond yields builds, a flexible approach helps in the search for attractive, relative values.
  • The Fed’s Dueling Mandates
    June 4, 2019 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    The Fed is tasked with keeping prices stable, unemployment low and long-term interest rates moderate. The monetary alchemy with such unstable elements is coming under review.
  • Smaller Muni SMAs Leave a Bad Taste in SALT-Seasoned Market
    May 8, 2019 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Big-ticket, ultra-short notes force muni SMAs with low minimums to buy longer-term paper at rich prices, likely giving clients more heartburn than total return.
  • The Fed’s "Financial Conditions" Conundrum
    April 3, 2019 [Market Insights, Jason Brady, CFA]
    Just because the market is celebrating the Fed’s policy u-turn doesn’t mean volatility is a thing of the past. Disconnects between fundamentals and asset prices don’t make for market stability.
  • Rerating the Judgment Factor Amid Smart Beta’s Derating
    March 15, 2019 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Turns out price matters for excess returns, and that what’s worked before doesn’t necessarily persist into the future. “Many factors aren’t real.”
  • Muni Bond Sales Surge as Issuers Ride Demand Wave
    February 19, 2019 [Market Insights, Dominic Alto and Charles Roth]
    Caveat emptor: current technical supply and demand flows favor issuers more than buyers. But diligent, disciplined investors can always find attractively priced, fundamentally sound bonds.
  • Understanding the Brexit Quandary
    January 29, 2019 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    While investors should be cognizant of the complexities and risks around Brexit, they should be just as aware of the opportunities in select U.K.-based businesses.
  • Suffering Liquidity Withdrawal Syndrome, Market Gets Its Fix
    January 8, 2019 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    It appears the “Powell Put” has been exercised as the Fed chief declares no “pre-set” course on rates and no “hesitation” to change its balance sheet runoff. But does the economy still need Fed accommodation, or do markets just want it?
  • Not Dovish Enough? Thornburg’s Brady on the Fed and Markets
    December 20, 2018 [Market Insights]
    The U.S. Federal Reserve has roiled markets with its latest rate hike and comments from Chairman Jerome Powell, who disappointed many investors as insufficiently dovish in his December 19 remarks.
  • The Presidential Put, the Powell Put, and China’s New Playbook
    December 7, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    The trade conflict and Fed rate policy are buffeting markets at a time China was already grappling with debt challenges at home. But the volatility may be masking good economic fundamentals globally, reform efforts in China, and attractive investment opportunities.
  • Investing on U.S. Election Results? Caveat Emptor
    November 16, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Conventional market wisdom two years ago didn’t look right for long, as gains in industries seen as politically favored faded while one sector expected to suffer quickly rebounded.
  • Hurricanes, the Muni Market, and the Duct Tape Effect
    October 23, 2018 [Market Insights, Nicholos Venditti, CFA and Dominic Alto]
    Preparations ahead of a hurricane and rebuilding after it temporarily boost tax receipts in affected areas. But longer-term effects on muni markets are usually negligible.
  • Market Rout May Spur Rotation from Growth to Value
    October 11, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Even before the market selloff, downtrodden value stocks were perking up as pricey growth stocks stumbled. But durable index-level shifts are harder to call than individual stock price disconnects from business fundamentals.
  • Beware High Yield’s Siren Song
    September 17, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    High-yield returns have been great lately, as technical flows, fundamental factors and good economic growth align. But tight spreads, lofty net leverage and event risk don’t make for smooth sailing ahead.
  • The Efficiency Factor in Stock vs. Index Picking
    August 28, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth
    If the efficient markets hypothesis is questionable at the stock level, it’s more so at the index level. As the number of indices skyrockets, the number of companies declines, and passive flows grow, active price discovery becomes more and more valuable.
  • VRDOs Give Muni Investors Ammo to Protect Against Rising Rates
    July 18, 2018 [Market Insights, Dominic Alto and Todd Wax, CFA]
    The volatility of short-term rates, however, means the variable rate structure isn’t a silver bullet.
  • The Beautiful Game: Surprising Insights from the World Cup about Strategy and Teamwork
    June 18, 2018 [Market Insights, Christian Hoffmann, CFA]
    Team performance matters more than star players or a large resource base. And in a rapidly changing world, Totaalvoetbal can help teams adapt.
  • Italy’s Politics Drives a Wedge Between Its Stocks and Sovereign Bonds
    June 6, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Risk to the euro resurfaces in an unlikely governing coalition and challenging economic agenda, but Italy’s top stocks don’t face the same perils as its government bonds.
  • Portfolio Allocation When Safe Havens Get Stormy
    May 24, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    High-quality bonds and defensive stocks are on the ropes. And U.S. blue-chips look poised to roll over, if history is any guide. But what if it isn’t?
  • The Upside of Munis’ Down Market
    May 3, 2018 [Market Insights, Dominic Alto]
    Bond supply is plummeting, but so is demand. And rates are rising. Where are the silver linings?
  • 10-Year Treasury Yield Upshifts past 3% as Fear of Curve Inversion Grows
    April 25, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Stocks slide on rising rates and yield curve inversion concerns, but a recession doesn't look likely, judging by other economic data and the high yield bond market.
  • After #ZuckerbergHearing, Investors Don’t Unfriend Facebook
    April 13, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Facebook’s margins could ebb this year, but they remain at elevated levels and profits could still grow meaningfully.
  • The Tech Wreck, Bank Breach, and Welcome Return of Market Volatility
    April 4, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Tech and financials led the recent selloff, as headline noise and regulatory risks spooked investors. But strong corporate fundamentals, including earnings growth, should ultimately drive stock returns.
  • Regulators Seeking to Tax or Break Up U.S. Tech Giants Face Tough Task
    March 21, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    While U.S. tech giants are effective monopolies, they are so in an unconventional way, making taxing them easier than breaking them up.
  • Who’s Afraid of Higher Wages Driving Inflation?
    March 5, 2018 [Market Insights, Danan Kirby, CFA]
    Not necessarily the Fed, whose own research suggests wage growth is not a reliable indicator of future inflation. But markets, it appears, aren’t sure what to think.
  • U.S. Stocks Fall into Correction Territory, But Investors Should Keep Their Chins Up
    February 9, 2018 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Investors worried about wage and inflation data should appreciate the underlying strength of the economy, not to mention strong corporate earnings. The market volatility is creating better entry points for longer-term investors.
  • Guess What Delivered in Spades in Thornburg’s Internal 2017 Global 3 Stock/Security Competition?
    January 12, 2018 [Market Insights, Sean Koung Sun, CFA]
    At the beginning of every year, a number of investment professionals at Thornburg voluntarily place their informal, internal-only bets on which three securities—from stocks to currencies or other financial assets—might together produce the best beta-adjusted returns in the year ahead. In 2017, the winner was Sean Sun, whose three picks included bitcoin. The cryptocurrency skyrocketed last year, of course, helping Sean win the prizeless competition by a wide margin.
  • Net-Neutrality Noise: Competitive Broadband Market Driven by Technological Change, Not Politics
    December 19, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to rescind the 2015 “net-neutrality” regime that had effectively re-classified lightly regulated internet service providers (ISPs) as...
  • A Megatrend is Underway
    November 16, 2017 [Market Insights]
    Four-hundred million Chinese millennials will soon account for more than half of China’s domestic consumption. As a group, they are larger than the working populations of the U.S. and Western Europe...
  • Falling Correlations Put Stock-Specific Attributes in Driver’s Seat
    October 16, 2017 [Market Insights]
    As third-quarter earnings season gets underway in earnest this week, equity market participants are expecting company fundamentals and reported results to be larger drivers of performance for large...
  • As Fed’s QE Dismantling Begins, Questions Around Growth, Asset Prices Linger
    September 27, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    The U.S. Federal Reserve has announced the October start of the slow reversal in the unprecedented expansion of its balance sheet following the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Chairwoman Janet Yellen...
  • Tough Sledding in Multisector Bond Investing? It Depends on the Team
    September 19, 2017 [Market Insights, Danan Kirby, CFA]
    The Iditarod is considered one of the world's most grueling and dangerous races. Sled dogs travel 1,100 miles through increasingly treacherous arctic terrain. The dogs and mushers traditionally run the entire day and then rest at night...
  • A Long/Short Bridge Between Stocks and Bonds
    September 7, 2017 [Market Insights, Stephen Jimenez]
    Can long/short alternative equity strategies work as a “bridge” between equity and fixed income? It’s an interesting question recently posed to us by a wealth advisory team. Both asset classes become...
  • As Perceived Risks Rise, Limited-Term U.S. Government Funds Offer Shelter
    August 29, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Most U.S. risk asset prices have enjoyed a long ride higher amid slow-but-steady economic growth, scant inflation and still ample central bank monetary support. But if fund flows are any indication of...
  • Yes, ADRs Do Carry Foreign Currency Risks
    August 25, 2017 [Market Insights, Todd Wax, CFA]
    A common misperception is that American depositary receipts, which bundle ordinary shares of an overseas-listed company into a U.S.-traded security, don’t carry currency risk. Driving the confusion is...
  • “Death by Amazon” a Real, Though Not Indiscriminate Threat
    August 9, 2017 [Market Insights]
    When the curators at Merriam-Webster convene to select their Word of the Year for 2017, they might consider “Amazonization” for their short list. Since the June 15th announcement of Amazon’s...
  • Are Low Vol ETFs as Smart as They Sound?
    July 27, 2017 [Market Insights, Josh Rubin]
    How smart are “smart beta” products? As factor-based investing is the latest fashion in the allocation trend to passive exchange traded funds, the performance of the most popular among smart beta...
  • On Chaos, Butterflies, and Robustness
    July 24, 2017 [Market Insights, Danan Kirby, CFA]
    In the early 1960s, a meteorologist undertook a mission to predict the weather. Unique to his approach at the time was his extensive use of computers to assist in the predictions. He began running...
  • Bank Loans Beat High Yield Amid Rising Rates? Don’t Bank on It
    June 29, 2017 [Market Insights, Christian Hoffmann, CFA]
    Bank loan funds have been widely touted as a great way to help fixed income investors ride out a rising interest rate cycle. Also known as levered loan or senior loan funds, they are, after all, high...
  • More Overseas Outperformance May Be In Store
    June 19, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    After years of excellent equity returns at home, U.S. investors appear increasingly interested in moving their chips into less crowded trades abroad, where economic growth is on the upswing, earnings cycle...
  • Yellen at the Markets: Don’t Worry. Low Unemployment to Trump Transitory Low Inflation
    June 15, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Despite weaker economic data of late, the U.S. Federal Reserve matched market expectations in raising its benchmark interest rate June 14, 2017 a quarter point, setting its new range to a still highly...
  • Parsing Long/Short Equity Liquid Alts Performance, Fees and Net Exposures
    May 24, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    The sharp focus on investment management fees nowadays has brought private hedge funds under heavy scrutiny, along with their generally poor performance against long-only benchmark indices. So...
  • Goodhart’s Law, Greenwashing and ESG
    May 19, 2017 [Market Insights, Danan Kirby, CFA]
    "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." This insight comes from economist Charles Goodhart, whose precept refers to the tendency of individuals or organizations...
  • House Passes Health Care Reform, But the Senate’s Prescription Likely to Vary
    May 5, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    In this Q&A, Thornburg’s Connor Browne doubts the Senate will pass the House’s American Health Care Act (AHCA) in its current form, and is cautious...
  • The Mirror Image of the Weak Q1 GDP Reading
    May 1, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    It's the Rorschach economy. After much weaker-than-expected U.S. first-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data, it seems economists' views range from....
  • Trump Trade? The More Likely Reflation Trade is in Europe
    April 28, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    European asset prices have surged since independent Emmanuel Macron emerged as the decisive winner in the first round of the French presidential election...
  • ETFs’ Total Costs Underappreciated
    April 12, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Morningstar’s director of exchange-traded fund research penned an interesting article April 12 on the total cost of ETF ownership, which we also wrote about in a recent article examining the latest...
  • Managing Risk Exposures Amid Fed Balance Sheet Normalization
    April 7, 2017 [Market Insights, Josh Yafa]
    The U.S. Federal Reserve has released the minutes from its March monetary policy meeting, suggesting that the unwinding of trillions of dollars in debt on its balance sheet could start later this...
  • U.S.’s So-so Hard Economic Data May Weigh on Buoyant Consumer Sentiment
    March 30, 2017 [Market Insights]
    Recently, much has been made about the divergence between hard and soft data on economic fundamentals in the U.S. On March 28, the Conference Board reported that its consumer confidence...
  • Patience Is a Virtue (Especially in Municipal Bond Investing)
    March 17, 2017 [Market Insights, Christopher Ryon, CFA]
    In an upwardly rising interest rate environment patience is an extremely important character trait for investors. They need to examine their investment horizons, make sure they are appropriate for their...
  • The Fed’s Regime Change
    March 16, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    The U.S. Federal Reserve shifted gears at its March 15, 2017, monetary policy meeting, lifting its key Federal funds rate a quarter-point to a 0.75-1.00% range. Although the increase was widely flagged...
  • Market Shrugs off Fed Rate Hike Warning
    February 24, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    After leaving its benchmark interest rate near zero for eight years and then lifting it just once in each of the last two, the market has grown accustomed to discounting U.S. Federal Reserve indications...
  • Trump Trade to Trump Fade?
    February 3, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    In the wake of Donald Trump’s November electoral victory, investors focused on his pro-growth agenda of tax reform, deregulation and infrastructure spending, not on his protectionist and...
  • What’s Past isn’t Prologue So Far in 2017
    January 24, 2017 [Market Insights, Charles Roth]
    Markets this year have gotten off on the right foot. Over the first three weeks of 2017, the S&P 500 Index added 1.3% to its 12% gain in calendar 2016, while the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. Aggregate...
  • Can Bank Loan Funds Float to a Narrow Outcome?
    January 18, 2017 [Market Insights, Jeff Klingelhofer, CFA]
    Many investors might see bank loans as “fixed income” without duration risk, given their floating-rate structure. They may use them as a way to reduce their exposure to rising risk-free rates without...
  • The Flip Side of the Muni Market Selloff
    January 17, 2017 [Market Insights, John Burnham, CFA]
    Recent municipal bond market movements mark a transition from a period of significant overvaluation to fair or even under-valuation. This can be a painful process for muni market...
  • December Jobs Data and Defensive Fixed Income Positioning amid Lurking Inflation Risks
    January 13, 2017 [Market Insights, Josh Yafa]
    The December U.S. jobs report wasn’t particularly surprising, though a couple of nuances are worth considering for fixed income investors. While the economy added 156,000 jobs, which was a bit...
Important Information
Before investing, carefully consider the Fund’s investment goals, risks, charges, and expenses. For a prospectus or summary prospectus containing this and other information, contact your financial advisor or visit thornburg.com. Read them carefully before investing.
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Investments carry risks, including possible loss of principal. Additional risks may be associated with investments outside the United States, especially in emerging markets, including currency fluctuations, illiquidity, volatility, and political and economic risks. Investments in small- and mid-capitalization companies may increase the risk of greater price fluctuations. Investments in the Fund are not FDIC insured, nor are they bank deposits or guaranteed by a bank or any other entity.

The performance data quoted represents past performance; it does not guarantee future results.

The performance of any index is not indicative of the performance of any particular investment. Unless otherwise noted, index returns reflect the reinvestment of income dividends and capital gains, if any, but do not reflect fees, brokerage commissions or other expenses of investing. Investors may not make direct investments into any index.

The views expressed are subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the views of Thornburg Investment Management, Inc. This information should not be relied upon as a recommendation or investment advice and is not intended to predict the performance of any investment or market.

Please see our glossary for a definition of terms.

Thornburg mutual funds are distributed by Thornburg Securities Corporation.

Thornburg Investment Management, Inc. mutual funds are sold through investment professionals including investment advisors, brokerage firms, bank trust departments, trust companies and certain other financial intermediaries. Thornburg Securities Corporation (TSC) does not act as broker of record for investors.