Fixed Income · Scenario & Simulation DeskInstitutional

QL Rates Desk

What a steepener, a credit shock or a 2022 replay does to a bond book — tenor by tenor, not with one blended duration. Key-rate durations, nine named curve and spread scenarios, six crisis replays, a seeded factor Monte Carlo that draws twelve months of simulated rate and spread paths, an empirical cross-check, and a curve alpha board that ranks carry + roll-down per unit of simulated risk. Live curve and spreads from FRED; the fixed-income signal layer lives on QuantLogix Bonds.

The book

Start from a preset or, on Institutional, enter your own bond-ETF book (any of the 38 names on the Bonds universe). Nothing is stored — the desk is stateless.

Curve scenario lab

Pick a shock. The curve chart draws today's Treasury curve against the shocked one; the book is repriced with key-rate durations, a convexity term and spread duration, and the one-year view adds carry. Locked scenarios open on Institutional.

TodayShocked
Custom shock — basis points per tenor, plus IG / HY OAS

Key-rate ladder

Where the book's duration actually sits on the curve. Two books with the same duration can hold opposite steepener risk — this is the chart that shows it.

HoldingWeightDur3M2Y5Y10Y30YSpread durYieldRoll-down

Crisis replay

The observed Treasury and spread moves of six named windows, applied to today's book. Carry is pro-rated to the window's length. Approximate FRED close-to-close changes, rounded to 5bp.

GainLosshover a column for the rates / spread / carry split

Simulated 12-month paths

Two thousand seeded paths. Daily key-rate and spread changes are implied from liquid proxy ETFs, carry-stripped and demeaned (rates carry zero drift, so the only expected return is carry + roll-down), then block-bootstrapped in ten-day blocks and repriced through every holding. The blue lines are a second model — the ETFs' own returns bootstrapped with their historical drift — there to disagree with the first.

Book return cone
Factor model p10–p90p5–p95Factor medianEmpirical p10 / p50 / p90
10-year yield cone
p10–p90Median

Curve alpha board

Carry + roll-down from the live curve, the simulated twelve-month distribution, and the ratio that matters: expected excess return over cash per unit of simulated risk. Ranked across your book and a fixed reference set so a holding is always judged against what it could have been.

Expected 12-month excess vs cashSimulated p10–p90
#ETFSleeveDurCarryRoll-downStatic 12mSimulated 12mp10 / p90P(loss)Excess vs cashAlpha score

Methodology

Frequently asked questions

What is the QL Rates Desk?

An institutional fixed-income desk over any bond-ETF book. It splits each holding's duration across the 3M/2Y/5Y/10Y/30Y key rates, reprices the book under nine named curve and spread scenarios and six historical crisis windows, simulates twelve months of rate and spread paths with a seeded block bootstrap of liquid proxy ETFs, cross-checks that with an empirical bootstrap of the ETFs' own returns, and ranks carry plus roll-down per unit of simulated risk on a curve alpha board.

How are the simulated paths built?

Daily 2Y, 10Y and 30Y changes are implied from SHY, IEF and TLT returns net of carry divided by duration; IG and HY spread changes are the residual of LQD and HYG after their key-rate exposure. The series are demeaned so rates carry zero drift, then resampled in ten-day blocks into 252-day paths. Every instrument is repriced along each path with its key-rate durations, convexity, spread duration, carry and roll-down. The draw is seeded, so a payload is reproducible.

Are the crisis replays real moves?

They are approximate close-to-close changes in the FRED Treasury constant-maturity series and the ICE BofA IG and HY option-adjusted spreads over each named window, rounded to five basis points, applied to today's book. They replay the tape; they do not forecast it.