Looking under the Hood of Active Credit Managers

Abstract

Extensive research has explored the style exposures of actively managed equity funds. We conduct an exhaustive set of returns- and holdings-based analyses to understand actively managed credit funds. We find that credit long/short managers tend to have high passive exposure to the credit risk premium. In contrast, we find that high-yield-focused long-only managers provide less exposure to the credit risk premium than their respective benchmarks. For both credit hedge funds and long-only credit mutual funds, we find that neither have economically meaningful exposures to well-compensated systematic factors.

Keywords: corporate bonds, fixed income mutual funds, fixed income hedge funds

JEL Classification: G12, G14, M41