Making Markets · Colossus | Investing & Business Podcasts

Adam Abbas: Navigating the Credit Markets - [Making Markets, EP.50]

·57 min·3 clips

He says leverage alone is a blunt tool; the real job is understanding downside, recovery, and hard assets.

Eric Golden opens by framing Making Markets around the psychology and structure behind markets. He introduces Adam Abbas as a portfolio manager and head of fixed income at Oakmark. The conversation starts with lessons drawn from investing in the TMT sector. From there it turns to how interest rates affect security prices. Abbas keeps the focus on how policy, supply, and expectations shape bond markets. The discussion moves into deficits and the worry that more spending could crowd out private capital. He argues that private capital remains the smartest allocator over time. The point is not that the issue needs to be solved right away. The point is that theory and actual data can drift apart for years before markets force a correction. He says the bond market may eventually test the resolve of politicians. That pressure would come through repricing rather than speeches. The conversation also touches on structural forces like deglobalization. Tariffs and more isolationist pressure are part of that picture. He balances those long run risks against visible near term softness in housing and labor. That leaves the near to medium term looking potentially more deflationary than some market narratives suggest. By the end, Abbas sounds willing to buy if the market widens and offers better value.

As heard by us

A blunt look at how rates, deficits, tariffs, and policy pressure reshape bond markets.

Adam Abbas and Eric Golden spend most of this conversation on the machinery behind bond markets: interest rates, security prices, TMT lessons, deficits, tariffs, deglobalization, and the gap between theory and the data.

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Why you'd press play

You want a clear read on how a fixed income portfolio manager thinks about interest rates, security prices, deficits, tariffs, and the Fed.

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