Zenith’s guide to rebuilding defensive portfolios

Defensive assets are meant to be the boring part of a portfolio. Now, it’s where advisers are making some of their hardest calls.

Bonds spent the past few decades earning a reputation as the go-to hedge to equities. Since 2022, that reputation has been tested, with the correlation between the two asset classes flipping to positive territory.

So, are bonds broken? Are they still good diversifiers for stocks? Or do advisers need to be looking elsewhere to “diversify their diversifiers”?

In this episode, Zenith Investment Partners’ Head of Portfolio Solutions, Andrew Yap, and Head of Alternatives and Global Fixed Income, Rodney Sebire, outline why they believe now is the time for advisers and investors alike to rebuild the defensive portion of their portfolios.

They share where they are seeing the most opportunity (across both public and private markets), how they assess managers (and the red flags you can look out for), as well as some of the recent innovations in managed accounts that can help advisers track public and private exposures.

Chapters:

00:00 Why Bonds Aren’t Broken

05:05 Is De-Dollarisation a Threat?

07:00 Why Private Credit Boomed

11:11 Spotting Private Credit Risks

15:44 Private Credit’s “Cockroach” Problem

19:00 Navigating Private Asset Structures