This summer has the potential to be “hot” for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum as she navigates two parallel negotiations with Washington. Kevin Ritter of our EM Debt team shares his views on trade and security issues between the US and Mexico in the coming months.
Learn More This summer has the potential to be “hot” for Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum as she navigates two parallel negotiations with Washington. Kevin Ritter of our EM Debt team shares his views on trade and security issues between the US and Mexico in the coming months.
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As Investment Grade Private Credit grows, smaller club deals could offer investors greater pricing power and allocations. Jacqueline Baum of our IGPC team shares her views on club deals, a growing segment of our private credit production.
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Our view is that the impact of private credit risks on financial markets is likely to be limited, as we believe the amount lent is not overwhelming relative to the size of the economy.
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High valuations raise the question of how markets are likely to perform in 2026. If markets performed strongly in 2025 despite valuations, can they do so again in 2026? The answer to that question may come down to how well the market handles what’s different between the two years.
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US economic resilience has been a multi-year theme, including 2025 when the economy kept growing amid the largest tariff implementation since the 1930s. Growth has aided corporate profitability, and that strong fundamental backdrop has buoyed markets, with equities trading around all-time highs and corporate bonds experiencing historically tight spread levels.
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So far, tariff-related headwinds have failed to durably dent the march higher in market valuations. For example, the spread of the Bloomberg US Credit Index recently reached 68 bps, the tightest level since 1997. Our rigorous focus on fundamentals compels us to examine whether current bond spreads fully reflect all the risks that exist in the economy and the financial system (inflation, consumer resiliency, private credit lending).
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Frontier Market debt, in some ways, looks like a throwback to the early days of Emerging Market (EM) debt as an asset class, offering both higher yields and greater potential for economic convergence across a subset of typically below investment grade-rated EM countries. While we expect the development of Frontier Markets to play out differently from the first “iteration” of EM, we think that experience can still serve as a guide – where despite a less certain journey, we have a clear understanding of the destination.
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A collateralized loan obligation (CLO) is a special purpose investment vehicle that issues bonds at different rating levels as well as an unrated equity tranche to raise funds. The CLO then invests those proceeds in a diversified pool of floating rate loans.
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Perhaps the most widespread question for investors is why US economic activity has not weakened despite the magnitude of tariffs imposed since April. While reasons come to mind (weaker dollar, low gas prices, tax bill), a simpler explanation may be a lag between the announcement of tariffs and their economic impact. Despite uncertainty, we believe there are some conclusions that can be drawn based on the factors supporting growth as well as the example of the 2018 tariff war. These conclusions help frame our investment outlook for the second half of 2025.
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Regardless of what happens in the days and weeks to come concerning tariffs, US and global growth is likely to slow down materially in our view. However, bonds are once again demonstrating some of their defensive characteristics in times of market upheaval. With yields at elevated levels, the higher income potential of US fixed income becomes even more compelling for investors when considering that bonds have typically been less volatile than stocks over the last 20 years.
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At PPM, we see an elegant solution to General Account (GA) portfolios seeking capital-efficient yield enhancement without giving up liquidity or transparency – Investment Grade (IG) rated Emerging Market (EM) public debt. This segment of the EM universe allows an opportunity for a significant pick-up over comparable US corporate credit allocations with all-in yield and spread levels similar to those attainable in the IG Private Credit space. Counterintuitively, this income pick-up is generated with a risk, volatility, impairment and capital charge profile similar to, if not better than, US corporate credit opportunities.
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As is often the case following periods of strong market performance, “bull market complacency” can creep in as investors lose sight of the fundamentals that anchor valuations. The extreme of this view is that the credit quality of each distinct issuer is irrelevant. At PPM, we strongly reject this point of view.
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Institutional investors can generate additional yield and potentially higher risk-adjusted returns with Investment Grade Private Credit (IGPC). IGPC is a growing and attractive asset class that often offers financial covenants and bespoke maturities that can better match an investor’s long-term liabilities, particularly pensions
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The conflict in the Middle East, the ongoing war in Ukraine, the outcome of the US Presidential election and the progression of the Fed’s easing cycle – these are some of the events that present risks but also opportunities for investors. In this newsletter, we try to determine how these events are likely to affect investment outcomes for our clients. Having said that, as a bottom-up, research-driven fixed income asset manager, we believe that our core competence does not lie in predicting how these events unfold, such as the speed of rate cuts by the Fed. Rather, we intend to generate alpha for our clients by understanding how sectors and individual credits may be most impacted by these events (e.g., by lower interest rates, regardless of how quickly the Fed cuts).
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Mark Hughes and Kevin Ritter, CFA charterholders and Co-Heads of Emerging Market Debt at PPM America, unpack overlooked opportunities in investment-grade emerging market debt.
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Join host Stewart Foley on the InsuranceAUM.com Podcast as we explore the evolving private equity landscape, including co-investments, GP-led secondary deals, and the shifting dynamics of fundraising and M&A activity in today’s market.
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Luke Stifflear is the Portfolio Manager and Head of Private and Structured Credit at PPM.
Read More(1) AUM includes committed but unfunded capital for PPM’s private equity and commercial real estate businesses. AUM includes both securities issued by PPM CLO vehicles held by PPM separately managed account clients and the underlying collateral assets of the CLO vehicles managed by PPM.