How Can Investors Take Advantage of Rising Interest Rates?

Even though many financial analysts and investors focus on the rate of interest is low, but the rising rate of interest can change the landscape of the market for individual investors and businesses. However, the rising rate of interest is a thing for which the investors of fixed income should be prepared. Various fixed income instruments perform badly when the rate of interest rise like the FD rate of interest is low than many other investment instruments.

What to Do When Interest Rates Are Rising?

Investing in Bonds of Short-Term:

When the rate of interest is trending higher for a long period of investments, then shortening your investment portfolio's duration may alleviate the risk of the rate of interest. Since the bond prices have an inverse relation with the rate of interest, bonds for the long-term are exposed to the risk of substantial downfall in value because of increasing rates of interest.

This strategy can be helpful in many ways. Though short-term bonds can offer a comparatively lower rate of interest than long-term bonds, they are less risky for holding until maturity. This is because they are lesser sensitive towards severe rate drop in prices and hence, they are easier to sell even when the rate of interest rises.

Opting for Bond Ladders:

Bond ladder is another strategy to invest wherein you purchase bonds with different maturities and the range of this ladder depends on the time horizon of your investment. The span of a shorter ladder ranges from 1 to 7 years and longer ladders have a span of up to 30 years.

Maintaining this ladder needs re-investing maturing bonds into new bonds that have maturities for maintaining the target balance. This approach may help to alleviate the risk that is inherited to purchase the bonds when the rates of interest are rising.

Buying short-term and medium-term bonds that have varied maturities enables the investors to maintain better control on exposure to the risk of the rate of interest. Re-investment of the proceeds from the bonds that are maturing into the bonds that are newly maturing as well provides an opportunity to the investors to take the benefits of the rising rate of interest.

The bond ladders as well provide a predictable flow of cash. While bond ladders need considerable capital, they are also a great method to mitigate the rate of interest.

Floating Rate Bonds:

These bonds are as well known as floaters. They have a variable interest rate that resets at a regular time interval. While the bond’s yield fluctuates with the change in reference rate of interest, the spread generally remains the same. The yield can be reset weekly, daily, monthly, or after every three, six, and 12 months.

Floaters can effectively remove the risk related to the rate of interest and hence it performs better than the traditional fixed-income investments as the rates of interest increase. The downside of this investment is that its investors will risk lower yields when the rate of interest goes down.

In addition to this, the variable-rate bonds reduce the risk of the rate of interest, the initial coupon of a gloating rate bond is lower than that of a fixed-rate investment that has the same credit quality and maturity.

Considering the current condition of the market and extended periods of a lower rate of interest than usual rates of interest, the investors are showing signs of confidence in a constantly increasing rate of interest environment. Floating rate bonds offer a strong case of investment at the current economic cycle, while it provides a hedge against potential inflation.

Investing in Cash-Rich Firms:

Cash-rich firms as well get benefits from rising interest rates to earn more on cash reserves. As an investor, you can look out for firms that have low debt-to-equity ratios or companies that have a large percentage of book value as cash.

Investing in Healthcare and Tech:

Most of the companies in the healthcare and technology sector retain profit in the form of ‘retained earnings’ to reinvest it in growth instead of paying it out as a type of dividends. The history represents that such a case usually leads to increased revenues when the interest rates are high. In the past half-century, the healthcare and technology sectors are experiencing an average gain of 13% to 20% following an increased rate of interest.

Investing or Purchasing Real Estate:

The prices of real estate tend to rise with and sometimes even outpace the rates of interest. Purchasing real estate or investing in it is another method to realize profits when the interest rates are rising.

Selling Your Assets:

As a business or as an individual, you can sell your unrequired property or some other assets. By doing this you may be able to get profit from selling these assets before the rates of interest begin to rise. The buyers may be looking to buy at a time when they can lock-in for the long-term and at low rates. So, they can be willing to pay the premiums for acquiring the required assets before the rates begin to go up.

Investing in Brokerage Companies:

Brokerage companies earn money from the earned interest on cash balance that is kept in the account of the client. So, resultantly they earn more interest at the time of high rates.

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