When Interest Rates Rise, What Should You Do with Bonds?

August 7, 2022
Bonds can play an important role in your portfolio, but how do rising interest rates affect fixed income?

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The Fed is hiking short-term interest rates to slow the economy. Now the bond market is starting to expect less inflation longer term, and so yields on Treasury bonds have declined from their peak. What should bond investors do?

In this episode, Mark Riepe speaks with Kathy Jones, Schwab's chief fixed income strategist. Kathy has analyzed global bond, foreign currency, and commodity markets extensively throughout her career as an investment analyst and strategist, working with both institutional and individual clients. Kathy makes regular broadcast appearances on CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg TV, and many other networks and is often quoted by The Wall Street JournalThe New York TimesFinancial Times, and Reuters.

Kathy and Mark discuss the reasons why investors typically hold bonds in a portfolio, how the yield curve tends to function, quantitative tightening, and many other topics related to bonds and the current interest-rate environment.

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Financial Decoder is an original podcast from Charles Schwab. For more on the series, visit Schwab.com/FinancialDecoder.

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