Our Strategy

At DUCENTA SQUARED, we understand that the global landscape offers opportunities not only to invest but also to establish future relationships between all our stakeholders. Our years of experience have taught us to always make your organization's interests our priority.

Our strategy is shaped by deep relationships, disciplined research, and a long-term perspective, so your goals stay at the center of everything we do.

The Ducenta Approach

Our Approach

The Ducenta Squared Asset Management platform is built on more than forty years of experience in fixed income investing. We aim to deliver stable, long-term results by actively managing the key drivers of performance—sector rotation, credit selection, and duration positioning—to generate consistent excess returns over benchmark.

Disciplined, collaborative

Investment Philosophy

Our investment philosophy is grounded in rigorous fundamental credit analysis, a robust risk management framework, and a deeply collaborative culture. We place a strong emphasis on liquidity, allowing us to proactively position portfolios for evolving market cycles and capitalize on opportunities at every stage. Our disciplined approach to risk, focused on downside protection, has consistently supported strong performance across market environments.

How it's Structured

Investment Process

Our repeatable investment process has been refined over and over throughout decades of direct investment experience across multiple market and economic cycles. The Investment Policy and Strategy Committee drives the top-down process by setting portfolio parameters based on macroeconomic fundamentals, relative value assessments, and supply and demand technicals. Portfolio managers develop industry strategy, targeting relative value opportunities and collaborating with our research analysts who provide bottom-up fundamental analysis. The analysts provide detailed credit analysis focusing on a company’s business model, financials, management team, and corporate structure.

5 Strategies

Core, Core Plus, High Yield, U.S. Credit, Low Duration

Navigate the tabs below to explore our strategies

Core Strategy

Our Core Strategy is a long-only, investment-grade fixed income strategy benchmarked against broad market indices such as the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. The portfolio invests in securities rated within the top four tiers (all investment grade) with no maturity restrictions.

Typical holdings include U.S. Treasury and agency securities, corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), asset-backed securities (ABS), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), preferred securities, and money market instruments.

The strategy aims to deliver consistent excess returns over a full market cycle by capturing relative value across sectors, emphasizing security selection, and actively managing duration. A disciplined risk management process underpins every stage of implementation.

Strategy available to both institutional and high net worth clients

Customization available across sectors, ratings, maturity, and SRI screening

Core Plus Strategy

Our Core Plus Strategy is a long-only fixed income approach benchmarked against a broad market index such as the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. The portfolio invests across the ratings spectrum — including both investment grade and high yield — with no maturity restrictions.

Typical holdings may include U.S. Treasury and agency securities, corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities (MBS), asset-backed securities (ABS), commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), preferred securities, and money market instruments. The strategy may also invest in leveraged loans and non-dollar-denominated securities to broaden opportunity and enhance diversification.

Core Plus seeks to deliver higher income and consistent excess returns by expanding beyond traditional investment-grade sectors. The strategy actively captures relative value opportunities through thoughtful sector rotation, security selection, and dynamic duration management. With greater flexibility comes the need for precision — our investment team applies a disciplined, research-led process to ensure risk is managed without compromising long-term performance goals.

Strategy available to both institutional and high net worth clients

Customization available across sectors, ratings, maturity, and SRI screening

High Yield Strategy

Our High Yield Strategy is a long-only approach focused on below-investment-grade corporate bonds, with selective exposure to leveraged loans when appropriate. The strategy is benchmarked against a BB/B High Yield Index and is designed to capture attractive income and capital appreciation opportunities in the high yield market.

We emphasize credit quality within the high yield universe, primarily investing in BB and B-rated securities to participate in market upswings while aiming to preserve principal during periods of volatility. Opportunistic allocations to split-rated B/CCC credits may be considered when risk is adequately compensated. In times of market stress or when spreads narrow, the strategy tactically shifts into higher-quality securities to manage downside risk.

Our process combines top-down macroeconomic and credit cycle analysis with disciplined, bottom-up security selection to construct portfolios positioned for performance across varying market conditions. Risk management is integrated throughout, helping ensure consistency and capital preservation.

Strategy available to both institutional and high net worth clients

Customization available across sectors, ratings, maturity, and SRI screening

U.S. Credit Strategy

The U.S. Credit Strategy is a long-only, investment-grade bond strategy that seeks to provide stable income, principal protection, and capital appreciation through a diversified portfolio of U.S. dollar-denominated securities. The strategy is benchmarked against a broad investment-grade credit index and adds value through sector allocation, security selection, yield curve positioning, and relative value analysis.

The team employs a disciplined process that blends top-down macroeconomic and credit cycle views with rigorous bottom-up fundamental research. Investment guidelines, including sector positioning, duration, and quality bias, are set by the firm’s Investment Policy & Strategy Committee, while experienced sector analysts drive security selection.

Current positioning reflects a neutral duration stance and a selective overweight to BBB-rated credits, with relative value tilts toward financials, insurance, and technology sectors. The strategy is designed to produce consistent excess returns over the full market cycle while maintaining high credit quality and risk-adjusted performance.

Strategy available to both institutional and high net worth clients

Customization available across sectors, ratings, maturity, and SRI screening

Low Duration Strategy

The Low Duration Gov/Credit Strategy is a short-duration, investment-grade fixed income strategy designed to provide capital preservation, liquidity, and competitive risk-adjusted returns. Benchmarking against the Bloomberg Barclays U.S. 1–3 Year Government/Credit Index, the strategy invests in U.S. Treasuries, agency securities, and high-quality corporate bonds with a focus on limiting interest rate volatility and drawdowns.

The team employs a repeatable investment process that incorporates top-down macroeconomic analysis and forward-looking credit and sector views, aiming to construct resilient portfolios positioned for varying market conditions.

Oversight is provided by the Investment Policy & Strategy Committee, with daily monitoring and strong internal controls to manage portfolio risk. With its emphasis on high credit quality, diversification, and active risk management, the strategy seeks to preserve principal while capturing incremental income in the front end of the yield curve.

Strategy available to both institutional and high net worth clients

Customization available across sectors, ratings, maturity, and SRI screening

Our Insights

Explore our market outlooks and sector summaries, published quarterly. See what our analysts are thinking about.

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