The stock market is a tried and tested way to build wealth at the tradeoff of volatility and risk. There are multiple ways to manage both but with SVB’s collapse serving as a cautionary tale, we believe in employing evidence-based protocols.

2022 was one of the worst years for bond returns. Conservative investors with larger bond allocations in their portfolio would have suffered large paper losses in the face of the fastest interest rate hiking cycle in history. But these losses could mean additional future returns.

Many investors worry that the present market environment of rising interest rates will decrease equity valuations and therefore lead to relatively poor equity market performance over the next year or more. From a theoretical perspective, how do these rate hikes affect the market?

We can’t dispute that rising costs and inflation are at our doorstep; we could however, argue against the claim that a doomsday outcome on stocks is certain whenever interest rates rise. Let’s see what the data has to say.

The last time tapering occurred in 2013, markets wobbled for a while, and bonds - the most badly affected of all asset classes - suffered a significant loss over a short period of time. The event was then dubbed the “Taper Tantrum”. With a fresh round of tapering looming on the horizon, how worried should we be of our investments?