When you’re navigating any challenging environment the best approach is to remain active and flexible.

In a highly-volatile setting, we don’t rely on outsized positions or big bets on difficult-to-predict macro trends. We stay agile and make smaller, opportunistic moves.

By staying nimble, unconstrained, and well-diversified we’re able to keep our options open to seize attractive opportunities wherever they become available.

The destination remains the same, but especially in conditions like this, the wisest path is to make a little bit of money a lot of times.

Hear how Rick Rieder seeks to make a little bit of money a lot of time

When you’re navigating any challenging environment, we believe the best approach is to remain active and flexible. By staying nimble, unconstrained, and well-diversified our Portfolio Managers are able to seize attractive opportunities wherever they become available.

BlackRock’s active fixed income platform

With $1,053 billion of client assets entrusted to BlackRock’s active fixed income managers, we offer quality, value and choice so you can choose what’s best for your clients.1
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Competitive performance
99% of our active bond mutual fund assets outperformed within their Morningstar peer groups.2
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Deep market expertise
500+ global fixed income analysts employ an investment process that blends disciplined portfolio construction with regular risk & performance reviews.3
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World-wide reach
21 primary investment centers worldwide allow investment teams to benefit from sharing across asset classes and regions.4

I’m up at 3:45 every morning. I want to know where all the markets are. I work out for an hour then the day really gets going.

I’m Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock.

So my job is investing money for clients trying to generate returns using fixed income assets within portfolios. From being in this business for 35 years, you learn you got to be thoughtful, you got to innovate, you got to be different, and then apply that to the experience you have and the research that you’re doing.

Education for me is literally the foundation of everything. I’m chairman of the board of North Star Academy. It’s over 14 charter schools, serving 6,000 kids in the city of Newark. We started an internship program to bring high school kids in to help them with not just understanding markets, the economy, finance, but also understanding how you interface in business. We’re helping to change the future of thousands of underserved kids.

It gives you a real boost to see the difference you can make.

There’s a lot to do in a day, but when you start to see what you can get done, I think it’s safe to say that I won’t look back and wish I had slept more.

Meet Rick Rieder: Morningstar’s 2023 Outstanding Portfolio Manager

Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, has been awarded the 2023 Morningstar Award for Investing Excellence, Outstanding Portfolio Manager.* Rick Rieder’s consistent approach to managing strategies like Strategic Income OpportunitiesTotal Return, Global Allocation and more have helped funds deliver long-term success.

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I always say unconstrained, it's not about you can do crazy things to take risk. It's actually you can use things to bring down your risk, optimize your return. And boy, you talk about the next couple of years-- high interest rates, restrictive interest rates, volatility high-- you've got to be nimble. You've got to be aggressive in terms of how you take advantage of them. 
You think about how much being unconstrained has allowed you to change, next few months or something is incredible. We can buy. What we are doing, investing in short end of the yield curve one year, two year type of assets. That is the most exciting thing I've done in a really long time. And without taking a lot of interest rate risk, a lot of credit risk 
So today, get a lot of income. Don't take a lot of interest rate risk with a Fed that's still moving. But now start to shift a little bit to the long end because you can buy investment grade at high yield distressed dollar prices. That's pretty exciting. So those are the big shifts we're making. And I could see that playing out over the next few months. 

Rick Rieder on Strategic Income Opportunities

Hear from Rick on how the higher yield environment is allowing his team to make some exciting moves in the Strategic Income Opportunities Fund by staying nimble and active.

The Morningstar RatingTM for funds, or "star rating", is calculated for managed products (including mutual funds, variable annuity and variable life subaccounts, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, and separate accounts) with at least a three-year history. Exchange-traded funds and open-ended mutual funds are considered a single population for comparative purposes. It is calculated based on a Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return measure that accounts for variation in a managed product's monthly excess performance, placing more emphasis on downward variations and rewarding consistent performance. The top 10% of products in each product category receive 5 stars, the next 22.5% receive 4 stars, the next 35% receive 3 stars, the next 22.5% receive 2 stars, and the bottom 10% receive 1 star. The Overall Morningstar Rating for a managed product is derived from a weighted average of the performance figures associated with its three-, five-, and 10-year (if applicable) Morningstar Rating metrics. The weights are: 100% three-year rating for 36-59 months of total returns, 60% five-year rating/40% three-year rating for 60-119 months of total returns, and 50% 10-year rating/30% five-year rating/20% three-year rating for 120 or more months of total returns. While the 10-year overall star rating formula seems to give the most weight to the 10-year period, the most recent three-year period actually has the greatest impact because it is included in all three rating periods.

BlackRock provides compensation in connection with obtaining or using third-party ratings, rankings, or data.

The performance quoted represents past performance and does not guarantee future results. Investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that an investor's shares, when sold or redeemed, may be worth more or less than the original cost. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance quoted. Standardized performance and performance data current to the most recent month end may be obtained by clicking on the fund names above.

The Morningstar RatingTM for funds, or "star rating", is calculated for managed products (including mutual funds, variable annuity and variable life subaccounts, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, and separate accounts) with at least a three-year history. Exchange-traded funds and open-ended mutual funds are considered a single population for comparative purposes. It is calculated based on a Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return measure that accounts for variation in a managed product's monthly excess performance, placing more emphasis on downward variations and rewarding consistent performance. The top 10% of products in each product category receive 5 stars, the next 22.5% receive 4 stars, the next 35% receive 3 stars, the next 22.5% receive 2 stars, and the bottom 10% receive 1 star. The Overall Morningstar Rating for a managed product is derived from a weighted average of the performance figures associated with its three-, five-, and 10-year (if applicable) Morningstar Rating metrics. The weights are: 100% three-year rating for 36-59 months of total returns, 60% five-year rating/40% three-year rating for 60-119 months of total returns, and 50% 10-year rating/30% five-year rating/20% three-year rating for 120 or more months of total returns. While the 10-year overall star rating formula seems to give the most weight to the 10-year period, the most recent three-year period actually has the greatest impact because it is included in all three rating periods.

BlackRock provides compensation in connection with obtaining or using third-party ratings, rankings, or data.

The performance quoted represents past performance and does not guarantee future results. Investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that an investor's shares, when sold or redeemed, may be worth more or less than the original cost. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance quoted. Standardized performance and performance data current to the most recent month end may be obtained by clicking on the fund names above.

The Morningstar RatingTM for funds, or "star rating", is calculated for managed products (including mutual funds, variable annuity and variable life subaccounts, exchange-traded funds, closed-end funds, and separate accounts) with at least a three-year history. Exchange-traded funds and open-ended mutual funds are considered a single population for comparative purposes. It is calculated based on a Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return measure that accounts for variation in a managed product's monthly excess performance, placing more emphasis on downward variations and rewarding consistent performance. The top 10% of products in each product category receive 5 stars, the next 22.5% receive 4 stars, the next 35% receive 3 stars, the next 22.5% receive 2 stars, and the bottom 10% receive 1 star. The Overall Morningstar Rating for a managed product is derived from a weighted average of the performance figures associated with its three-, five-, and 10-year (if applicable) Morningstar Rating metrics. The weights are: 100% three-year rating for 36-59 months of total returns, 60% five-year rating/40% three-year rating for 60-119 months of total returns, and 50% 10-year rating/30% five-year rating/20% three-year rating for 120 or more months of total returns. While the 10-year overall star rating formula seems to give the most weight to the 10-year period, the most recent three-year period actually has the greatest impact because it is included in all three rating periods.

BlackRock provides compensation in connection with obtaining or using third-party ratings, rankings, or data.

The performance quoted represents past performance and does not guarantee future results. Investment return and principal value of an investment will fluctuate so that an investor's shares, when sold or redeemed, may be worth more or less than the original cost. Current performance may be lower or higher than the performance quoted. Standardized performance and performance data current to the most recent month end may be obtained by clicking on the fund names above.

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The BlackRock Bond Pyramid is an interactive tool that showcases ways to blend active funds with bond ETFs to help meet portfolio goals or prepare for changing markets.
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