JPMorgan Strategic Income Opports Fd earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating.
The largest contributor to the rating is the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 57%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and outperformed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. Excellent risk-adjusted performance also influences the rating. This can be seen in the fund's five-year alpha calculated relative to the category index, which suggests that the managers have shown skill in their allocation of risk. Lastly, the process is limited by being an actively managed strategy. Historical data, such as Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that actively managed funds have generally underperformed their passive counterparts, especially over longer time horizons.
Compared with other funds in the Nontraditional Bond Morningstar Category, this fund, historically, hews closely to peers' credit and interest-rate sensitivity over the past few years. Opening the analysis to additional factors, the portfolio has displayed biases over time, whether towards or away from certain fixed-income instruments. Relative to the category average, the managers have been underweight B rated bonds in recent years. In the latest month, the strategy has also relatively underweighted B rated bonds compared with Morningstar Category peers. Additionally, there's been a notable bias away from debt with 20- to 30-year maturities over the past few years. Similarly, in recent months, the strategy also had less exposure to debt with 20- to 30-year maturities than peers. Finally, during the past few years, the fund leaned meaningfully towards cash. In this month, the strategy also leaned more towards cash compared with its peers.
This strategy has a modest 4.2% 12-month yield, lower than its average peers' 4.9%. It also has a 4.3% 30-day SEC yield (a measure similar to yield-to-maturity). A lower yield tends to indicate lower credit risk. The portfolio has a higher average surveyed credit quality of BBB, compared with the typical peers' BB, and 4% of the strategy's assets are rated non-investment-grade compared with its average peers' 24%. Strategies with less credit risk may help to provide a reliable ballast during periods of market stress.