Approach

Goodwood Inc.: an alternative to passive investment management

Our approach is focused on the preservation of capital through extensive and rigorous investment analysis on a position and portfolio basis.

Traditional Bond Fund and ETFs

>Benchmarked to a broader index

>Inability to isolate corporate credit exposure

>Large pooled products limit the manager’s ability to adapt to changing market conditions

>Restrictive mandates limit ability to adequately hedge portfolio risks

>Narrow mandate and large institutional assets under administration restricts access to opportunities


Goodwood Milford Fund

>Ability to be proactive and opportunistic in volatile or changing market conditions

>Experience isolating opportunities and hedging unwanted risks

>Flexible mandates take advantage of a broad scope of market inefficiencies and opportunities

>Low volatility strategy of emphasizing securities with attractive coupons while managing duration

>Invest where credit events such as asset sales and equity raises may result in credit rating upgrades

>Short sell credit downgrade candidates with deteriorating corporate fundamentals and/or over-leveraging

Why invest in Goodwood's Fixed Income Solutions Now?

  • Central Banks in G7 countries have embarked on a rate increase cycle in an attempt to tighten financial conditions and control inflation
  • In our view, the invasion of Ukraine will slow economic growth to the extent that the number of rate hikes may not be as high as previous forecasts
  • In this environment, we believe bonds are appropriate holdings, however, portfolios should comprise Floating Rate Notes and very short-term corporates
  • Although interest rates have risen, we have seen sharp downturn indicators in many forward-looking sentiment measures, as such, we are actively monitoring the situation and will take advantage of market dislocations should we see a reversal in the market’s expectations on future interest rates
  • Recent central bank decisions make the bond market considerably more attractive from a total return perspective in our opinion

Our Investment Strategy: An alternative to traditional fixed income

Corporate Credit

  • Identify attractive high coupon corporate bonds with potential capital gains from credit rating upgrades, deleveraging, improving earnings and asset sales. Corporate bond coupons are 200-400% above equal term Canada’s

Value Approach

  • 25+ year history of fundamental, bottom-up analysis of individual companies with predictable businesses. We use a value approach of investing and avoid companies that are sensitive to factors beyond management control

Opportunistic

  • The investment-grade bond mandate is active, nimble, and capitalizes on market inefficiencies created by the structure of the over-the-counter bond market

Canada-Centric

  • Investment-grade portfolios are predominately Canadian companies. We expect Canadian issuers in the bond portfolio to be at a 90% minimum

Duration

  • Predominately higher coupon, shorter maturity, corporate bonds resulting in a lower duration exposure. Our macro assessment on interest rate direction and curve positioning form only part of our investment process