09/14/2026
What If Higher Interest Rates Are the New Normal? After 40 years of falling rates, the investment playbook may be changing
Creed may have inadvertently written the soundtrack for today’s stock and bond market. After four decades in the relative comfort of falling interest rates, investors may be asking a familiar question: can markets take us higher even as rates move in the same direction?
History rarely repeats itself exactly, but it often rhymes. And with Treasury yields again approaching levels that once seemed ordinary, it’s worth looking back at how investors navigated previous periods of higher interest rates, inflation and borrowing costs.
For nearly four decades since the early ‘80s, investors enjoyed one of the greatest financial tailwinds in modern history. Inflation generally declined, interest rates trended lower, and falling bond yields helped support both stock and bond valuations.
For years, investors became accustomed to falling rates as a kind of financial gravity. When the economy stumbled, the Fed cut. When markets cracked, bonds often rallied. Mortgages got cheaper, refinancing became almost routine and growth stocks benefited from an ever-lower cost of money. After a while, what was historically unusual began to feel perfectly normal.
Then came COVID, massive fiscal stimulus, supply-chain disruptions, trade wars, geopolitical conflicts, oil above $100, enormous federal deficits, and now an artificial intelligence infrastructure boom measured in the trillions, all helping to turn the old investment playbook upside down for diversified investors.
For this week's newsletter, here are three things I’d be thinking about with your portfolio right now:
1. Rethink your bond selection, style, duration and diversifcation
2. Broaden your stock portfolio- more than US big- tech concentration
3. Don't bet the farm on the Fed, they have very little control over what is currently going on that is both supply and demand driven.
Bottom Line: You don’t need to predict where interest rates go next. You need a portfolio that can work if rates stay higher, fall, or surprise us again.
click to read more of Ulin's weekly insights, outlook and charts in out Gain a Wealth of Insight post.
After 40 years of falling rates, the investment playbook may be changing Creed may have inadvertently written the soundtrack for today's stock and bond