Michael Giarla

Smith Breeden Associates employs a variety of investment strategies including indexing, hedging, social screening and quantitative. Though not limited by sector or market-cap, the firm tends to invest in the stocks of companies in the finance, energy minerals, electronic technology, healthcare technology and consumer non-durables sectors. They invest globally, across all market-caps, with emphasis on the stocks of large-cap companies. SBA's fixed-income approach seeks to determine a fixed-income security's relative value. The firm employs quantitative research to identify high credit quality investments with the potential to generate risk-adjusted returns in excess of market returns. Their primary determinant of relative value is the option-adjusted spread to US Treasuries. The firm's fixed-income investment strategy is designed to generate a consistent and predictable return over the client's preferred benchmark. SBA's strategy emphasizes sector and security selection, duration targeting and high credit quality. The firm uses proprietary models to project mortgage prepayments, to identify price options embedded in agency MBS and corporate bonds, to price corporate bond credit risk, as well as to predict the future returns of major asset classes.

Bank holding company

Functions as a College/University

Functions as a College/University

Provides brokerage services

Amundi Smith Breeden's research and portfolio management activities focus on the U.S. mortgage market and agency mortgage-backed securities sectors. The firm also applies their quantitative research and trading skills to other sectors of the fixed income market such as corporate bonds, commercial MBS, and asset-backed securities. They seek to build a portfolio of fixed income securities with wide risk-adjusted spreads that are properly matched to the duration of the market produces a total return in excess of the market return. Portfolios typically overweight the "spread sectors" (corporate, commercial MBS, agency MBS, and asset-backed sectors). Amundi Smith Breeden believes that these sectors offer competitive risk-adjusted returns over Treasury investments. Portfolios typically have a high percentage of agency mortgage-backed securities, producing an average portfolio credit quality of AA or above.