Macroeconomic Indicators & Trends

October 11, 2026

Public Bond Managers: Converging and Underperforming

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Torsten Slok

Partner, Chief Economist

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The gap between the 90th- and 10th-percentile public core bond managers has narrowed from 1.5% a year in the 2010s to 1.1% since 2020, see the first and second charts below. Dispersion now spikes mainly in crises and quickly falls back.

This convergence comes on top of persistent underperformance by public fixed income managers. For example, data from S&P shows that over the past 10 years, the majority of active Treasury fund managers have underperformed their benchmarks, see the third chart below.

The bottom line is that with little difference between top and bottom managers in public fixed income, and almost all of them trailing their index, public core fixed income has become essentially a beta allocation for both institutions and households.

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