What Is Interest Rate Risk?
Let me explain interest rate risk directly: it's the chance that your bond or fixed-income investment loses market value because interest rates shift upward. If rates go up, the value of your existing bond drops in the secondary market. We measure this price change using the bond's duration.
How to Manage Interest Rate Risk
You can cut down on interest rate risk by purchasing bonds with varying durations or by hedging your fixed-income holdings with tools like interest rate swaps, options, or other derivatives. This approach helps protect your portfolio from unexpected rate movements.
Key Takeaways
- When interest rates rise, bond prices fall, and the opposite happens when rates drop—this adjusts the market price of existing bonds to compete with new, more attractive issues.
- We measure interest rate risk through a security's duration, where longer-term bonds show greater sensitivity to rate changes.
- To reduce this risk, diversify your bond maturities or hedge with interest rate derivatives.
Understanding Interest Rate Risk
Interest rate changes hit bonds and fixed-income securities hardest, so as a bondholder, you need to watch rates closely and decide based on expected shifts. When rates rise, security prices fall because holding your current bond means missing out on better opportunities elsewhere. For example, if your bond pays 5% and rates climb to 7%, its value drops to make it competitive—nobody wants the lower rate without a price adjustment.
Fixed-rate bonds issued before a rate increase can only compete by lowering their prices. You manage this risk by hedging or diversifying to shorten your portfolio's effective duration and blunt the impact of rate changes.
Example of Interest Rate Risk
Consider this scenario: you buy a five-year, $500 bond with a 3% coupon. Then rates jump to 4%. Selling becomes tough because new bonds offer better returns, driving down your bond's secondary market price below what you paid. On the flip side, if rates fall below 5% on a bond yielding that rate, its value rises since you're locked into a better deal than the market offers.
Bond Price Sensitivity
Fixed-income securities with different maturities react variably to rising rates—this is price sensitivity, quantified by duration. Take two securities: one maturing in a year and another in 10 years. A rate increase lets the short-term owner reinvest soon at higher rates, but the long-term holder is stuck for years, justifying a steeper price drop for the longer bond.
Longer maturity means more price decline per rate increase, though this sensitivity diminishes at very long terms—a 10-year bond is much more sensitive than a one-year, but a 20-year is only slightly less so than a 30-year.
The Maturity Risk Premium
Long-term bonds typically include a maturity risk premium—a higher built-in return to offset the greater interest rate risk over time. With larger durations, these securities carry more risk, so expected returns are higher than for short-term ones to reward you for that exposure. Other factors like default or liquidity risk premiums also influence bond rates.
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