MFXAX — Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio
Data updated: 2024-02-28
MFXAX — Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio. Long Total / Aggregate Bond · $516.43M AUM · 0.77% expense ratio. Holdings, fees, performance and SEC filings.
MFXAX Fund Overview
MFXAX — Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio is a US mutual fund managed by Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust, categorised as Long Total / Aggregate Bond. ABC INVEST provides holdings, performance, costs, cashflows, risk data, prospectus documents and SEC filings, sourced from SEC filings.
- Type: US mutual fund
- Manager: Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust
- Category: Long Total / Aggregate Bond
- Assets under management: $516.43M
- 1-year return: 6.8%
- Ticker: MFXAX
- SEC CIK: 0000741375
- SEC series ID: S000004114
- Share class ID: C000011537
MFXAX Investment Objective and Strategy
Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio describes its objective and strategy as follows, from its latest prospectus filed with the SEC by Morgan Stanley Institutional Fund Trust.
Investment objective
"The Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio (the ""Fund"") seeks above-average total return over a market cycle of three to five years."
Principal investment strategy
"Under normal circumstances, at least 80% of the Fund's assets will be invested in fixed income securities. This policy may be changed without shareholder approval; however, you would be notified upon 60 days' notice in writing of any changes. The Fund invests primarily in a diversified mix of U.S. dollar-denominated investment grade fixed income securities, particularly U.S. government, corporate, municipal and mortgage-backed securities. The Fund will ordinarily seek to maintain an average weighted maturity between five and ten years. The Adviser employs a value approach toward fixed income investing and evaluates the relative attractiveness among corporate, mortgage and U.S. government securities, and also may invest in non-dollar-denominated issues. The Adviser relies upon value measures to guide its decisions regarding sector, security and country selection, such as the relative attractiveness of the extra yield offered by securities other than those issued by the U.S.
Treasury. The Adviser also measures various types of risk by monitoring interest rates, inflation, the shape of the yield curve, credit risk, prepayment risk, country risk and currency valuations. The Fund may invest opportunistically in fixed income securities that are rated below ""investment grade"" or are not rated, but are of equivalent quality. These fixed income securities are often referred to as ""high yield securities"" or ""junk bonds."" High yield securities are fixed income securities rated below Baa3 by Moody's Investors Service, Inc. (""Moody's""), below BBB- by S&P Global Ratings Group, a division of S&P Global Inc. (""S&P""), below BBB- by Fitch Ratings, Inc. (""Fitch"") or, if unrated, considered by the Adviser to be of equivalent quality. The Fund may also invest in public bank loans made by banks or other financial institutions.
Public bank loans are privately negotiated loans that are not publicly traded for which information about the issuer has been made publicly available. These public bank loans may be rated investment grade or below investment grade. In addition, the Fund may invest in convertible securities. The Fund's mortgage securities may include collateralized mortgage obligations (""CMOs""), commercial mortgage-backed securities (""CMBS""), stripped mortgage-backed securities (""SMBS"") and inverse floating rate obligations (""inverse floaters""). In addition, the Fund may invest in to-be-announced pass-through mortgage securities, which settle on a delayed delivery basis (""TBAs""). The Fund may also invest in securities of foreign issuers, including issuers located in emerging market or developing countries.
The securities in which the Fund may invest may be denominated in U.S. dollars or in currencies other than U.S. dollars. The Fund may also invest in restricted and illiquid securities. The Fund may, but it is not required to, use derivative instruments for a variety of purposes, including hedging, risk management, portfolio management or to earn income. The Fund's use of derivatives may involve the purchase and sale of derivative instruments such as futures, options, swaps and other related instruments and techniques. The Fund may utilize foreign currency forward exchange contracts, which are also derivatives, in connection with its investments in foreign securities. Derivative instruments used by the Fund will be counted towards the 80% policy discussed above to the extent they have economic characteristics similar to the securities included within that policy."
MFXAX Holdings
Top 10 holdings of Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio by percentage of net assets, from the fund's latest SEC N-PORT filing.
| Holding | % of net assets |
|---|---|
| Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC | 10.93% |
| Umbs, Tba | 10.32% |
| United States Treasury | 5.37% |
| United States Treasury | 5.34% |
| United States Treasury | 4.43% |
| Umbs, Tba | 4.39% |
| Wi Tsy Bill | 4.03% |
| Umbs, Tba | 3.53% |
| Umbs, Tba | 1.35% |
| United States Treasury | 1.03% |
MFXAX Portfolio Allocation
Asset-class allocation of Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio by percentage of net assets, from the latest SEC N-PORT filing.
| Asset class | Allocation |
|---|---|
| Securitized | 58.0% |
| Fixed Income | 40.1% |
| Cash & Equivalents | 20.0% |
| Real Estate | 1.1% |
MFXAX Performance
Total returns for MFXAX (as of 2026-10-01), from SEC filings.
| Period | Total return |
|---|---|
| 1 year | 6.8% |
| 3 years (annualised) | -3.2% |
MFXAX Risk Information
Risk metrics for MFXAX, derived from monthly returns in SEC filings.
- 1-year volatility (annualised): 8.4%
MFXAX Costs and Fees
MFXAX costs about $77 per $10,000 invested per year in fund expenses.
- Net expense ratio: 0.77%
- Gross expense ratio: 0.92%
- Portfolio turnover: 431%
- Brokerage commissions: 0.62 bps of average net assets (SEC N-CEN)
MFXAX Cashflows
Over the 12 months to 2023-12, Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio had net outflows of $91.91M, from monthly SEC N-PORT filings.
| Month | Net flow |
|---|---|
| 2023-12 | −$16.13M |
| 2023-11 | −$20.41M |
| 2023-10 | −$27.97M |
| 2023-09 | −$825.65K |
| 2023-08 | $11.24M |
| 2023-07 | $5.62M |
MFXAX Debt Constituents
Largest debt holdings of Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio by percentage of net assets, from the latest SEC N-PORT filing.
| Debt holding | % of net assets |
|---|---|
| United States Treasury | 5.37% |
| United States Treasury | 5.34% |
| United States Treasury | 1.03% |
| Bank Of America Corp. | 0.60% |
| Bank Of America Corp. | 0.60% |
| United Overseas Bank Ltd. | 0.55% |
| Bpce SA | 0.53% |
| Centene Corp. | 0.49% |
| Concentrix Corp. | 0.49% |
| Newcastle Coal Infrastru | 0.46% |
MFXAX Prospectus and SEC Filings
Official Core Plus Fixed Income Portfolio filings on SEC EDGAR — prospectus, portfolio holdings and annual reports.
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2023-01-27
- Prospectus (485BPOS) — filed 2022-01-28
- Prospectus supplement (497) — filed 2024-02-02
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2024-02-28
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2023-11-28
- Portfolio holdings (N-PORT) — filed 2023-08-25
- Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2023-12-06
- Annual census (N-CEN) — filed 2022-12-14
Related Funds
Other Long Total / Aggregate Bond funds tracked on ABC INVEST:
Data Sources
ABC INVEST compiles this page from public filings made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) through EDGAR: portfolio holdings and monthly cashflows from Form N-PORT, expenses and returns from fund prospectuses (Form 485BPOS) and the SEC DERA Risk/Return Summary data sets, annual data from Form N-CEN, and shareholder reports from Form N-CSR.