Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee

R.J. Gallo, deputy CIO of fixed income at Federated Hermes, addresses the recent DOJ move to investigate Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell and the possible impact on monetary policy, on the latest episode of ‘Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee’.
Gallo, who will take up the fixed income CIO role in May, says we might see a more divergent FOMC where the votes actually matter.
“Does that make them more hawkish? I don’t know. I’ll tell you this. It certainly won’t make the hawks more dovish,” he says.
“It’s important to realise that many presidents get frustrated with the Federal Reserve,” adds Gallo, who prior to joining Federated Hermes in 2000, was at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But what has been extraordinary in the Trump administration has been the full-on verbal assault of the Federal Reserve and the resultant “feud between the White House and the Fed.” And the most recent development of the DOJ subpoena has to be viewed in that context.
On fixed income, Gallo takes a bit more of a cautious view. While his base case is for the US economy to grow in 2026, he is keeping some powder dry to reassess, in case there’s spread widening. “We don’t just want to chase an already highly-valued market.”
Another thing to watch is AI, which has accounted for a large portion of equity returns and stimulated the US economy through high capex spending. If we see poor returns to AI capex, that could challenge equity and credit valuations, Gallo says.

“I come into the year extremely bullish about fixed income and credit in general,” says John Lloyd, global head of multi-sector credit at Janus Henderson, on the latest episode of Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee. The asset manager oversees nearly half a trillion dollars of AUM.
Lloyd speaks about how markets are shrugging off some recent big geopolitical events because they do not impact earnings today and are viewed as one-off events, bespoke to a single country. Instead, they are focused on positive GDP growth as well as the Fed, which will be a tailwind to investing, as the US central bank is now injecting liquidity back into markets.
Artificial intelligence is also a focus. The hyperscalers will increase their capex budgets because they are in a race over the next several years.
Google, Facebook, Oracle and others are all issuing a tremendous amount of debt to support that capex growth. “You are going to see a lot of supply increase this year from AI,” Lloyd says. “I think that’s going to be a little bit of a negative supply technical in the fixed income markets this year, especially in the investment grade space.”

While credit is “probably a four-letter word right now,” it is doing reasonably well, says Tom Majewski, founder and managing partner at Eagle Point Credit Management.
“But headlines around the space will continue, and perhaps that unto itself creates some credit challenges,” he adds on the latest episode of Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee.
Majewski unpacks the First Brands collapse and fraud in general, noting there’s been a significant decline of occurrences of fraud in the US economy since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
He also discusses liability management exercises (LMEs), or coercive restructurings, sharing Eagle Point’s upcoming research that shows there’s been over 100 LMEs in the last five years. “If there’s a little over 1,000 loans, that’s about a 2% LME rate per year, separate from defaults.”

The degree of inflation the past few years has stretched the ‘K’ that defines the K-shaped economy, says Cindy Beaulieu, chief investment officer at Conning Noth America, in the latest ‘Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee’ podcast. Asset valuations and home prices have further added to the pressure.
The labour market is central to consumers in both the top and bottom of the K. The upper cohort are participating in the economy in a strong way. The bottom cohort are also participating – but even a modest amount of inflation is painful for them, because the base level of prices now is so much higher than it was just a few years ago.
“I would put right in the centre of those two lines of the K, the labour markets,” says Beaulieu, who sets fixed income and equity strategy for Conning North America, which serves the insurance industry and has nearly $200bn in assets under management. “It’s kind of like a rubber band. As long as it doesn’t snap, it holds the K together.”
In terms of investing, Beaulieu thinks corporate fundamentals are good. While valuations are stretched, all-in yields are accretive, particularly to fixed-income portfolios. She likes the structured areas and private placements.

The driver for 2026 will be the real step-change in capex requirements all around the AI data boom and the needs of hyperscalers, said Fabianna Del Canto, co-head of EMEA capital markets at MUFG, on the latest episode of the ‘Credit Exchange with Lisa Lee’ podcast.
“The absolute quantum required by the data centres dwarfs really any other type of infra-spend that we’re seeing,” said Del Canto.
Among myriad other effects, AI has brought about a previously-unimaginable type of demand on, effectively, the entire energy supply ecosystem. Because it’s impacting such a large-scale industry and multiple secondary ones, this is a “real seminal moment and period in time, in terms of how we’re shaping the economies going forward for the future,” she added.
But financing the AI boom will look different in Europe and the US.
“In Europe, you’re seeing a lot of discussion amongst leaders in the energy space trying to solve this from a sustainable angle,” Del Canto said. “It’s not energy at any cost or any type.”
Beyond data centres’ capex needs, Del Canto expects capital markets to be just as busy in 2026, if not busier. As a result, there’s a risk of spreads widening.
“We see a very healthy pipeline, and supply is going to keep ticking up in our view,” she said.