FICC Focus

South Korea has become a real-world case study in how market concentration, investor enthusiasm and leveraged ETFs can amplify volatility. In this episode, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Tanvir Sandhu, Rena Kwok and Shirley Wong examine how leveraged products can create powerful feedback loops when positioning starts to outweigh fundamentals. They unpack the mechanics of ETF rebalancing, the role of AI and semiconductor enthusiasm in Korea’s recent market swings and the implications for brokerages, fixed-income investors and broader investment themes across Asia.

“We’ve gotten a little addicted post-2008 to the Fed guiding us,” says Michael Goosay, CIO and global head of fixed income for Principal Asset Management. “I’ve been doing this a very long time to remember when... we kind of had to guess at what the Fed did.” In this episode of the Credit Crunch podcast, Goosay joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Noel Hebert to talk about the potential implication of a less-transparent Federal Reserve, while hitting on other key areas including investment grade and high yield credit, AI-driven corporate issuance, interest rates and global capital flows. The two also discuss portfolio construction and how, despite macro uncertainty having increased, corporate fundamentals remain resilient, and how the current backdrop favors active management. Emerging markets, securitized credit and municipals are discussed in brief, as is the current relative value landscape.

The Credit Crunch podcast is part of BI’s FICC Focus series.

Emerging market local-currency government debt deserves a prominent place in global fixed income portfolios, as economic fundamentals remain resilient and the US dollar remains rich. Victoria Courmes, portfolio manager on GMO’s emerging country debt team, joins Damian Sassower, Bloomberg Intelligence’s chief EM fixed income strategist, to assess the firm’s total return expectations through the second half of 2026. Courmes and Sassower identify undervalued sectors, explore alternative investment strategies and discuss the risk-return tradeoff in opportunistic frontier markets.

With the change in leadership at the Federal Reserve, investors are paying greater-than-usual attention to the outlook for short-term funding markets, money-market funds and the central bank’s balance sheet. Laurie Brignac, head of global liquidity at Invesco, joins Bloomberg Intelligence interest rate strategists Ira Jersey and Will Hoffman to discuss this and more on this Macro Matters edition of the FICC Focus podcast. Brignac explains why lending excess Treasury General Account balances into the repo market may create more operational risk than income, and why shrinking the Fed’s balance sheet would require changes to bank liquidity regulations before reserve balances can fall significantly. The group also examines whether the Fed should return to traditional temporary open-market operations, how stigma continues to limit use of standing liquidity facilities and where Invesco sees value across Treasury bills, commercial paper and ultra-short strategies. They close with a discussion of institutional and retail money-fund flows, the market’s capacity to absorb growing bill issuance and what investors should watch as the Fed’s task forces review its communications, data and balance-sheet frameworks.

The Macro Matters podcast is part of BI’s FICC Focus series.

In this episode of the FX Moment podcast, Bloomberg Intelligence Chief FX Strategist Audrey Childe-Freeman and Chris Turner, head of FX strategy at ING Bank in London, discuss dollar-yen near- and mid-term dynamics. The combined shift in the dollar view following the July 29 Fed meeting, stretched long positioning and joint US-Japan FX intervention were the perfect catalysts for a sharp move lower in dollar-yen, yet the market is already questioning whether the move can be sustained. Childe-Freeman and Turner both see a risk of further joint FX intervention, which should keep dollar-yen bulls in check for now, while US economic data and the associated Fed outlook, along with the BOJ’s September policy decision and Japan’s fiscal credibility, may determine how bullish investors can be on the yen into 4Q. They also discuss non-dollar ways to express the carry trade, including via bullish Norwegian krone and Australian dollar views.