AXA IM Swiss Fund – Bonds CHF

Active management – added value for investors

Many private investors are not sufficiently diversified and their asset allocation lacks a well-managed Swiss bonds product. In recent years our Portfolio Management team has consistently exceeded the expectations of Swiss institutional clients in terms of capital preservation during the crisis and as regards performance. We are therefore offering a product which provides private investors with the advantages that until now have been the sole preserve of institutional clients.

The AXA IM Swiss Fund – Bonds CHF will be managed using the same investment style that has generated consistent outperformance in our other products for more than three years. The team uses its decades of experience in the Swiss bond market to achieve sustained outperformance. The investments are indexed against the Swiss Bond Index "Total AAA-A", though the fund managers also have access to BBB-rated bonds. The fund's investment objective is to generate high and regular returns while ensuring capital security. The Swiss Bond Index "Total AAA-A" is used as a benchmark.

Our investment style is based on our core convictions:

  • The financial markets take time to react to fundamental developments. This produces trends that can be exploited.
  • Some investor interests lead to not entirely rational behavior and create price distortions. These can be used to generate performance.
  • Illiquid markets in particular have inefficiencies that one can exploit through arbitrage strategies to generate very low-risk outperformance.

 

These convictions have been validated over and over again in the team's many years of experience and have shaped its investment style, which is characterized in particular by the balanced mix of strategies.

For instance, we use proactive duration and yield curve management and over/underweight specific sectors versus the benchmark. To complete the investment profile we select specific securities on the basis of their relative value among bonds with similar characteristics. Interest rate futures on Swiss and German government bonds (no more than 30% of the fund's assets can be held in the latter) can be used for risk management and arbitrage purposes.

Source: AXA Investment Managers Switzerland Ltd.
September 2011