We regularly asked in 2014 whether investors should fear interest rates coming higher.
We thought a "law of history" would do much to quell those concerns.
More than 300 years of interest-rate history shows this fear is relatively uncommon.
Since then, central banks worldwide did raise rates significantly in response to a post-pandemic
inflation surge — the sharpest tightening cycle in four decades. Yet now rates have retreated
from their peaks in most developed markets. The long view remains instructive: short-term spikes
have always yielded to secular gravity. Debt overhangs, demographics, and structurally low
neutral rates all argue for a world where higher-for-longer eventually gives way
to the next descent.