Franklin Core Plus Bond Fund
Franklin Strategic Series · 5 share classes
Fund classification
Classified from what the fund holds · as of 2026 Q2
Franklin Core Plus Bond Fund is an actively managed U.S. bond fund.
- Asset class
- Bonds
- Region
- United States
- Management
- Actively managed
- Fund type
- Open-end fund
- Credit quality
- Mixed credit
- Rate sensitivity
- Intermediate duration
Fund profile
As filed in the prospectus · 2025 Q3
To earn a high level of current income. A secondary goal is capital appreciation over the long term.
The fund invests at least 80% of its net assets in bonds across the full spectrum of fixed-income securities—government, corporate, mortgage-backed, and asset-backed—using active macroeconomic and fundamental analysis to shift among debt classes and geographies. The strategy is core plus, meaning it emphasizes investment-grade securities but allocates up to 30% to below-investment-grade debt rated at least Caa/CCC to enhance returns. Because security selection depends on the manager's credit analysis and macroeconomic views, performance will diverge from the fund's benchmark, the Bloomberg US Aggregate Index.
| Share class | Gross | Net |
|---|---|---|
| FRSTX | 0.85% | 0.72% |
| FSGCX | 1.25% | 1.12% |
| FKSAX | 0.60% | 0.47% |
| FKSRX | 1.10% | 0.97% |
| FGKNX | 0.51% | 0.37% |
Net is what a holder pays after the adviser's contractual waiver; gross is before it. A waiver can expire.
Portfolio turnover 156.08% · as of 2025 Q3
Allocation
Asset groups · long / short shown separately, never netted · 2026 Q2
| Bonds | 56.74% |
| Securitized | 52.59% |
| Cash & short-term | 8.70% |
| Loans | 2.91% |
| Stocks | 0.04% |
| Derivatives | -0.13% |
These positions come to 120.86% of the fund's net assets. This counts only what the fund reported holding — the holdings disclosure covers assets, not liabilities such as borrowings — so it is not expected to reconcile to 100%.
The outer band is exposure held short — written against the portfolio rather than part of it, which is why it sits outside the ring and why the two are never netted into one figure.
Derivatives are shown at market value, not notional exposure.
Sector allocation
The same holdings as Allocation above, grouped by market sector instead of asset type · as of 2026 Q2
| Securitized | 43.8% |
| Government | 14.9% |
| Other | 10.7% |
| Cash | 7.1% |
| 12 smaller | 23.5% |
Government, Securitized and Cash are non-corporate buckets; International is foreign holdings we don’t sector-classify, and Other is the residual (held funds, unresolved names).
Latest quarter
What changed since the fund's previous filing
Largest new: FNMA or FHLMC ×6, GNMA ×2
Largest exited: FNMA or FHLMC ×5, GNMA ×3
Return profile
Total return as filed — price change plus distributions reinvested · trailing figures to Apr 2026
| Share class | 1-year | 3-year | 5-year | Vol | Worst fall |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| +4.78% | +15.59% | +9.36% | 3.22% | -2.65% | |
| +4.35% | +14.28% | +7.19% | 3.24% | -2.75% | |
| +5.04% | +16.44% | +10.72% | 3.38% | -2.59% | |
| +4.67% | +14.81% | +8.06% | 3.32% | -2.74% | |
| +5.27% | +16.95% | +11.49% | 3.35% | -2.68% |
These classes hold the same portfolio, so the 4.30pp spread over 5 years is the cost difference between them — roughly 0.86pp a year — not a difference in what they own.
Debt profile
What this fund holds — value-weighted across its bond and securitized long positions · as of 2026-04-30
Share of the fund's debt by how its coupon behaves — the fact that decides whether a rate move reaches this portfolio at all.
| Fixed rate | 86.1% |
| Floating rate | 13.9% |
| Zero-coupon or unclassified | 0.1% |
Share of the fund's debt value in each maturity band, shortest first.
| <1y | 2.7% |
| 1-3y | 8.5% |
| 3-5y | 12.7% |
| 5-10y | 24.4% |
| 10y+ | 51.8% |
These three overlap — one holding can be in arrears and paying in kind at once — so they are shown separately and never summed.
Risk profile
Interest-rate and credit-spread sensitivity, both in years · as of 2026Q2
More of this fund’s sensitivity sits in credit spreads than in interest rates — a rate rally that comes with a credit selloff works against it.
Where the loss would come from. The two shocks are the same size, so this is the balance of the fund's two sensitivities rather than a bet on one moving more.
| Credit spreads | 52% |
| Interest rates | 48% |
Filers report the impact of a 0.01% move only, so the total is our own scaling of that one number and overstates the loss on most bonds — read it as approximate, never as precise. The two sensitivities overlap rather than add up: they measure the same positions against different shocks, which is why the durations above are shown side by side and never summed.
Share of the fund's spread duration carried by each credit tier.
| Investment grade | +4.01 yr |
| High yield | +1.14 yr |
Share of duration at each point, shortest first. A positive figure loses value when spreads widen; a negative one offsets — a credit hedge.
| 3 mo | 0.01 yr | 0% |
| 1 yr | 0.27 yr | 6% |
| 5 yr | 1.00 yr | 21% |
| 10 yr | 1.54 yr | 32% |
| 30 yr | 1.94 yr | 41% |
| 3 mo | 0.01 yr | 0% |
| 1 yr | 0.28 yr | 5% |
| 5 yr | 1.15 yr | 22% |
| 10 yr | 1.65 yr | 32% |
| 30 yr | 2.05 yr | 40% |
The two bands measure the same positions against different shocks and do not add — a Treasury carries rate duration and no spread duration, a floating-rate credit the reverse. Rate tenors are also summed across every currency the fund discloses.
Show the numbers
| Tenor | Rate yrs | IG yrs | HY yrs | IG $/bp | HY $/bp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | +0.01 | +0.01 | +0.00 | $3.8k | $277 |
| 1 yr | +0.27 | +0.20 | +0.08 | $55.3k | $21.7k |
| 5 yr | +1.00 | +0.90 | +0.26 | $246.3k | $70.6k |
| 10 yr | +1.54 | +1.25 | +0.40 | $343.2k | $111.0k |
| 30 yr | +1.94 | +1.65 | +0.40 | $452.4k | $109.3k |
Dollar change per 1bp of spread movement, as filed and sign-anchored. A blank cell was not filed; a zero was.
Duration contribution in years, summing to the fund's 4.76 yr.
This is where the fund's rate exposure sits, not its currency risk — most international bond funds hedge the currency back to dollars, and the size of those hedges is not in the filing. Tenors are also summed across curves, so a 5-year JPY point and a 5-year USD point are added together.
Holdings
By % of NAV · equity positions carry filed share counts · every resolvable issuer links to its company page
| Ticker | Issuer | %NAV | Value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| INFXX | Franklin Institutional U.S. Government Money Market FundINFXX | 8.69% | $238.62M | — |
| — | United States of America4.25% · due 2054-08-15 | 4.34% | $119.18M | — |
| — | FNMA or FHLMC2.50% · due 2056-05-25 | 3.38% | $92.85M | — |
| — | GNMA6.00% · due 2056-05-15 | 3.03% | $83.12M | — |
| — | FNMA or FHLMC5.50% · due 2056-05-25 | 2.91% | $80.00M | — |
| — | FNMA2.00% · due 2052-04-01 | 2.69% | $74.00M | — |
| — | United States of America1.88% · due 2027-02-28 | 1.73% | $47.46M | — |
| — | FNMA or FHLMC3.00% · due 2056-05-25 | 1.66% | $45.44M | — |
| — | FNMA or FHLMC4.50% · due 2056-05-25 | 1.63% | $44.73M | — |
| — | United States of America3.88% · due 2027-11-30 | 1.59% | $43.70M | — |
Top 10 positions are 31.65% of net assets, top 25 47.13%, across 492 issuers.
See more of this fund's book
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