As expected by the market, the Bank of England (BoE) embarked on its first monetary tightening cycle in a decade last Thursday, with the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voting to hike interest rates to 0.50%. Although this will be some relief for long-suffering savers, rates still remain incredibly low in a historical context.
Many of the recent comments around fixed income have referred to the impact on the asset class of global monetary tightening. For example, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and Bank of Canada (BoC) have already raised interest rates, the Bank of England (BoE) have followed suit and, in January, the European Central Bank (ECB) will begin tapering their huge quantitative easing programme.
September 2007 is regarded by many as the beginning of the global financial crisis. However, despite the initial market sell-offs, the performance of most asset classes were turbo-charged in the decade that followed, given that it ushered in an era of ultra-loose monetary policy.
