Credit quality: An issuer of a debt instrument could suffer an adverse change in financial condition that results in a payment default (failure to make scheduled interest or principal payments), rating downgrade, or inability to meet a financial obligation. Securities that are rated below investment grade carry greater risk of default and should be considered speculative.

Market conditions: The value of the fund’s investments may decrease, sometimes rapidly or unexpectedly, due to factors affecting an issuer held by the fund, particular industries, or the overall securities markets. A variety of factors can increase the volatility of the fund’s holdings and markets generally, including geopolitical developments (such as trade and tariff arrangements, sanctions, and cybersecurity attacks), recessions, inflation, rapid interest rate changes, war, military conflict, acts of terrorism, natural disasters, and outbreaks of infectious illnesses or other widespread public health issues (such as the coronavirus pandemic) and related governmental and public responses. Certain events may cause instability across global markets, including reduced liquidity and disruptions in trading markets, while some events may affect certain geographic regions, countries, sectors, and industries more significantly than others. Government intervention in markets may impact interest rates, market volatility, and security pricing. These adverse developments may cause broad declines in market value due to short-term market movements or for significantly longer periods during more prolonged market downturns.

Impairment of collateral: Even if a loan is secured by collateral, the value of collateral securing a floating rate loan could decline, be insufficient to satisfy the loan obligation, or be difficult to liquidate. The fund’s access to the collateral could be limited by bankruptcy or by the type of loan it purchases. As a result, a collateralized senior loan may not be fully collateralized and can decline significantly in value.

Liquidity: The fund may not be able to meet redemption requests without significantly diluting the remaining shareholders’ interests in the fund. In addition, the fund may not be able to sell a holding in a timely manner at a desired price. Instruments with reduced liquidity may be harder to value and may be subject to greater price fluctuations than other investments. Floating rate loans may not have an active trading market and often have lengthy settlement periods and contractual restrictions on resale, which can delay the sale and adversely impact the sale price.

Prepayments: The principal on a loan or debt instrument may be prepaid prior to its maturity, reducing the potential for price gains. The rate of prepayments tends to increase as interest rates fall. 

Portfolio turnover: High portfolio turnover may adversely affect the fund’s performance and increase transaction costs, which could increase the fund’s expenses. High portfolio turnover may also result in the distribution of higher capital gains when compared with a fund with less active trading policies, which could have an adverse tax impact if the fund’s shares are held in a taxable account.

Cybersecurity breaches: The fund could be harmed by intentional cyberattacks and other cybersecurity breaches, including unauthorized access to the fund’s assets, confidential information, or other proprietary information. In addition, a cybersecurity breach could cause one of the fund’s service providers or financial intermediaries to suffer unauthorized data access, data corruption, or loss of operational functionality.

Credit quality: An issuer of a debt instrument could suffer an adverse change in financial condition that results in a payment default (failure to make scheduled interest or principal payments), rating downgrade, or inability to meet a financial obligation. Securities that are rated below investment grade carry greater risk of default and should be considered speculative.

Market conditions: The value of the fund’s investments may decrease, sometimes rapidly or unexpectedly, due to factors affecting an issuer held by the fund, particular industries, or the overall securities markets. A variety of factors can increase the volatility of the fund’s holdings and markets generally, including geopolitical developments (such as trade and tariff arrangements, sanctions, and cybersecurity attacks), recessions, inflation, rapid interest rate changes, war, military conflict, acts of terrorism, natural disasters, and outbreaks of infectious illnesses or other widespread public health issues (such as the coronavirus pandemic) and related governmental and public responses. Certain events may cause instability across global markets, including reduced liquidity and disruptions in trading markets, while some events may affect certain geographic regions, countries, sectors, and industries more significantly than others. Government intervention in markets may impact interest rates, market volatility, and security pricing. These adverse developments may cause broad declines in market value due to short-term market movements or for significantly longer periods during more prolonged market downturns.

Liquidity: The fund may not be able to meet requests to redeem shares issued by the fund without significant dilution of the remaining shareholders’ interests in the fund. In addition, the fund may not be able to sell a holding in a timely manner at a desired price. Reduced liquidity in the bond markets can result from a number of events, such as limited trading activity, reductions in bond inventory, and rapid or unexpected changes in interest rates. Markets with lower overall liquidity could lead to greater price volatility and limit the fund’s ability to sell a holding at a suitable price.

Foreign investing: Non-U.S. securities tend to be more volatile and have lower overall liquidity and trading volume than investments in U.S. securities and may lose value because of adverse local, political, social, or economic developments overseas, or due to changes in the exchange rates between foreign currencies and the U.S. dollar. Further, securities of non-U.S. issuers are subject to trading markets with potential governmental interference, varying regulatory, auditing, and accounting standards, and settlement and clearance practices that differ from those of U.S. issuers. Investment in non-U.S. securities also carries currency risk. Any attempts to hedge currency risk could be unsuccessful. Such investments may have higher transaction costs compared with U.S. markets. The fund’s overall foreign investing risk is increased to the extent it has exposure to emerging markets.

Cybersecurity breaches: The fund could be harmed by intentional cyberattacks and other cybersecurity breaches, including unauthorized access to the fund’s assets, confidential information, or other proprietary information. In addition, a cybersecurity breach could cause one of the fund’s service providers or financial intermediaries to suffer unauthorized data access, data corruption, or loss of operational functionality.

Bank loans: Investments in bank loans expose the fund to additional risks beyond those normally associated with more traditional debt instruments. The fund’s ability to receive payments in connection with a loan depends primarily on the financial condition of the borrower and whether or not a loan is secured by collateral, although there is no assurance that the collateral securing a loan will be sufficient to satisfy the loan obligation. In addition, bank loans often have contractual restrictions on resale, which can delay the sale and adversely impact the sale price. Transactions involving bank loans may have significantly longer settlement periods than more traditional investments (settlement can take longer than 7 days) and often involve borrowers whose financial condition is troubled or highly leveraged, which increases the risk that the fund may not receive its proceeds in a timely manner or that the fund may incur losses in order to pay redemption proceeds to its shareholders. In addition, loans are not registered under the federal securities laws like stocks and bonds, so investors in loans have less protection against improper practices than investors in registered securities.

Convertible securities and preferred stocks: Convertible securities and preferred stocks carry credit and interest rate risk, along with other risks associated with both equity and fixed income securities, and convertible securities may be called back by the issuer prior to maturity at a price that is disadvantageous to the fund.

Credit quality: An issuer of a debt instrument could suffer an adverse change in financial condition that results in a payment default (failure to make scheduled interest or principal payments), rating downgrade, or inability to meet a financial obligation. Securities that are rated below investment grade carry greater risk of default and should be considered speculative.

Market conditions: The value of the fund’s investments may decrease, sometimes rapidly or unexpectedly, due to factors affecting an issuer held by the fund, particular industries, or the overall securities markets. A variety of factors can increase the volatility of the fund’s holdings and markets generally, including geopolitical developments (such as trade and tariff arrangements, sanctions, and cybersecurity attacks), recessions, inflation, rapid interest rate changes, war, military conflict, acts of terrorism, natural disasters, and outbreaks of infectious illnesses or other widespread public health issues (such as the coronavirus pandemic) and related governmental and public responses. Certain events may cause instability across global markets, including reduced liquidity and disruptions in trading markets, while some events may affect certain geographic regions, countries, sectors, and industries more significantly than others. Government intervention in markets may impact interest rates, market volatility, and security pricing. These adverse developments may cause broad declines in market value due to short-term market movements or for significantly longer periods during more prolonged market downturns.

Interest rates: A rise in interest rates typically causes the price of a fixed rate debt instrument to fall and its yield to rise. Conversely, a decline in interest rates typically causes the price of a fixed rate debt instrument to rise and the yield to fall. The prices and yields of inflation-linked bonds are directly impacted by the rate of inflation as well as changes in interest rates. Generally, funds with longer weighted average maturities and durations carry greater interest rate risk. Changes in monetary policy made by central banks and/or governments are likely to affect the interest rates or yields of the securities in which the fund invests.

Active management: The fund’s overall investment program and holdings selected by the fund’s investment adviser may underperform the broad markets, relevant indices, or other funds with similar objectives and investment strategies.

Fixed income markets: Economic and other market developments can adversely affect the fixed income securities markets. At times, participants in these markets may develop concerns about the ability of certain issuers of debt instruments to make timely principal and interest payments, or they may develop concerns about the ability of financial institutions that make markets in certain debt instruments to facilitate an orderly market. Those concerns could cause increased volatility and reduced liquidity in particular securities or in the overall fixed income markets and the related derivatives markets. A lack of liquidity or other adverse credit market conditions may hamper the fund’s ability to sell the debt instruments in which it invests or to find and purchase suitable debt instruments.

Derivatives: The use of derivatives exposes the fund to additional volatility and potential losses. A derivative involves risks different from, and possibly greater than, the risks associated with investing directly in the assets on which the derivative is based, including liquidity risk, valuation risk, correlation risk, market risk, interest rate risk, leverage risk, counterparty and credit risk, operational risk, management risk, legal risk, and regulatory risk. Derivatives can be highly volatile, illiquid, and difficult to value, and changes in the value of a derivative may not properly correlate with changes in the value of the underlying asset, reference rate, or index. The fund could be exposed to significant losses if it is unable to close a derivatives position due to the lack of a liquid secondary trading market. The prices of derivatives may move in unexpected ways, especially in abnormal market conditions. Certain derivatives are also subject to counterparty risk, which is the risk that the derivative counterparty will not fulfill its contractual obligations. The use of derivatives includes the risk of potential operational issues, such as settlement issues. Derivatives are exposed to legal risks, such as the legality or enforceability of a contract. The adviser may not be able to accurately predict the direction of prices, economic factors, or other associated risks which could cause loss in value or impair the fund’s efforts to reduce overall volatility. New regulations may make derivatives more costly, limit availability, or otherwise affect their value or performance.