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Lessons from the 1970s

man with a tablet looking at charts

Audrey Goh Senior Cross Asset Strategist, Wealth Management Group

21 Sep 2023

Home > News > Wealth & retail banking > Wealth insights > Lessons from the 1970s
Fed Chair Chris Powell often uses the 1970s as a cautionary tale. We look back at a dramatic period for bond investors – and identify two potential approaches.

If you have lived and invested through the 1970s, you would recall how dramatic a time it was for bond investors. Back then, bond yields jumped from 6% to a staggering 16% in 1981 due to inflation, which soared from 2.8% in 1972 to a peak of 14.8% in 1980. Today, Fed Chair Powell often uses the 1970s as a cautionary example of the risks of allowing high inflation to persist. After three decades of subdued inflation and interest rates, bond markets are beginning to realise what that historical reference means for long-term interest rates.

Surprisingly, a look back at bond returns in the 1970s reveals an interesting fact. US 10-year government bonds delivered mostly positive returns during that period. Though real returns were negative due to high inflation, investors rarely saw nominal losses.  The worst annual drop was just 3% in 1980. Don’t rising bond yields mean lower bond prices?

Grow your wealth: Lessons from the 1970s - Chart 1

This apparent paradox was due to the high absolute coupon/yield during this period. The below chart shows the period when inflation was persistently above 5% during 1973 to 1982.  Bond prices fell as interest rates rose, but the substantial coupon helped offset the erosion of principal value.

Grow your wealth: Lessons from the 1970s - Chart 21

This brings us to a crucial concept: bond duration, a metric that measures interest rate risk. A higher yield means lower risk as rates rise, while a lower yield indicates higher risk. Duration, measured in years, tells us how much a bond’s price change when interest rates move.  For example, a bond with a duration of 7 years will decline by about 7% when interest rates increase by 1 percentage point, and vice versa.

Now, let’s us look at today’s interest rate risk for different types of bonds:

Grow your wealth: Lessons from the 1970s - table
Source: Bloomberg, Standard Chartered

Depending on your views on the business cycle would evolve, one can potentially take two approaches:

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