Duration Management
- 02:55
How portfolios can be positions to take advantage of expected future parallel shifts in the yield curve.
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In terms of positioning a portfolio for expected changes in interest rates, we can do this through managing the duration of the portfolio on the left hand side of this table are the actions that we might take if we expect an upward shift in the yield curve. So an upward shift in the yield curve is going to mean higher interest rates and as a result lower bond prices. Well if having lower bond prices as I portfolio manager, that's not going to be great for our portfolio, but it might be our investment mandate that we have to invest in bonds. So so as a portfolio manager, what we're going to need to do is to reduce our exposure to changes in interest rates, and therefore are falling bond prices as interest rates. There are many ways that we can do this the portfolio manager could sell some of the longer dated Bonds in their portfolios and buy some shorter dated bonds as a result. The overall portfolio duration will be decreased but that will create a lot of transaction costs. And if this is only a temporary position the unwinding of these traits my Inca further transaction costs furthermore, the portfolio manager might quite like holding the issuers of those bonds and doesn't want to maybe trade those bonds just to adjust their duration. So to maintain the Holdings in the portfolio while still adjusting the duration, I portfolio manager could use derivatives to achieve that same adjustment to the duration of their portfolio. You can reduce the duration of your portfolio for selling Bond Futures contracts or alternatively we could enter into interest rates swaps where we pay a fixed rate of interest if we're paying fixed on an interest rate swap. We will be receiving a Able rates of interest and as interest rates rise, we're going to be receiving more on that variable interest rate leg of our interest rate swap, but still paying a fixed rate of interest. Conversely on the right hand side here. If we think that's interest rates are going to fall or in other words. We're going to get a parallel downward shift of the yield curve lower interest rates mean higher bond prices and as a result of that we want to get more exposure to that increase in bond prices through having a higher duration within our portfolio since duration quantifies, the sensitivity of our bonds price to A change is interest rates. How can we increase the duration of the blondes in our portfolio? Well, it's the opposite of the way that we can reduce the duration we could sell shorter dated bonds and by longer dated bonds, we could buy Bond Futures to get more exposure to that Bond Marketplace all we could enter into a swap where we are receiving a fixed rate of interest and paying floating and interest rates fall. We paying a lower rate of interest on that paying leg of the interest rate swap, but still receiving a fixed amount.