Taylor Furlong, Director and Client Portfolio Manager of Global Investment Grade Credit for Barings, joined Julie Cooling, Founder and CEO of RIA Channel, at the GTE Wealth Forum to discuss navigating the tight investment grade spreads.
U.S. investment grade spreads are historically tight, beginning 2025 near 80 basis points and at one point widening to approximately 120 basis points. However, Furlong remains “cautiously optimistic,” pointing to a technical buyer base and a strong fundamental backdrop, which creates a solid foundation of stability in the face of geopolitical uncertainty.
Furlong adds that Barings is finding performance in strategic areas such as crossover trades, leveraging the firm’s $117 billion investment grade platform to identify less-followed issuers, capital structure trades, and catalyst-motivated trades anticipating mergers and acquisitions in 2026.
Barings is a more than $400 billion global investment manager serving insurance, institutional, and intermediary clients across public and private markets in fixed income, real assets, and capital solutions. As a subsidiary of MassMutual, Furlong notes that Barings builds well-tenured investment teams capable of taking a decades-long view of the market.
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