Building debt portfolios

Tim Farrelly  | farrelly's | 01 June 2012

Building debt portfolios used to be easy. You worked out the right mix of growth and income assets, set aside some cash and put the rest of the income assets in a fund that invested predominantly in government bonds. Job done. Of course, it is much harder now. Investors are demanding larger exposures to defensive assets, but what assets qualify as defensive? We have rather attractively priced term deposits (TDs), finance company debentures, corporate debt funds, listed debt, etc. We can’t even cal...