Effect of Interest Rate Hikes in the Stock Market (S&P 500) - A Historical Study

If you've been following the financial markets, the chatter in the current environment is the sell-off on global stock markets was driven by fears of an interest rate hike, particularly the 10-Year US treasury yield.

This raises the question: How did the stock market behave with the interest rate spikes in the past? And does a stock market sell-off necessarily follow when there is "spike" in treasury yields?

To answer this inquiry, we decided to check history since the current rate hike is not the first time it happened - in fact, looking at the data, we've visually identified 7 notable rate spikes in the last 40 years. We then checked how the bond prices and stock prices behaved during this "rate hike/spike" period to give us a flavor of what to potentially expect.

10-Year Treasury Yield from 1980 to Present

What Happens to Equities and Bond Prices When There is a Sudden "Spike" in Interest Rates?

**This analysis was done last May 03, 2013 - Before Ben Bernanke's "Tapering".**

This is in relation to Lloyd Blankfein's "Biggest Worry" -  Interest Rate Increases in Parallels to 1994

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-02/blankfein-sees-parallels-to-1994-interest-rate-increases.html

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein warned that the interest- rate environment has parallels to 1994, when a sudden and sharp increase in rates caught many investors off-guard."

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Question: What happens to Equities and Bond prices when there is a sudden hike in interest rates?

Methodology: We've examined the 10Y US Goverment Yields, S&P 500 Index and US Long Bond from 1981 to Present (32 years) and tried to find out what happens to Equity prices and Bond prices when interest rates make a sudden move up a.k.a "Interest rate spikes".

We've identified 5 interest rate spikes between the 32Yperiod.