Market and policy trends continue to support fixed income assets.

As widely expected, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points at its latest meeting on Wednesday. Unexpectedly, however, Chairman Jerome Powell failed to push back against easing financial conditions as he had in the November press conference. This came at a time when the Chicago Fed’s National Financial Conditions Index had reached its easiest level since last April, when the fed funds rate was in the 25 to 50bps range. We see a number of implications for investors:

With private placement markets having finished another strong year in 2022, we review key themes and offer our outlook for 2023.

The private placement market had a productive 2022, with close to $100 billion in volume across several hundred issuers from a global universe, according to Private Placement Monitor.

The market opened 2023 in strong fashion with a flurry of activity in just the first two weeks. We believe the more stable rate and spread environment relative to 2022 will likely support opportunistic issuance and bring back some of the issuers that stayed on the sidelines during the...

With Big Pharma relatively well-capitalized and in a deal-making mood, we see the potential for a rebound for small- and mid-cap stocks in this innovative sub-sector.

Therapeutics stocks—under the weather for two years as macro headwinds have punished longer-duration investments—now appear poised for a potential recovery.

We believe therapeutics is a diverse and dynamic industry brimming with intriguing business models and underappreciated catalysts capable of generating significant alpha. Here are just few trends that could soon swing the momentum in investors’ favor:...