While conventional wisdom holds that rising interest rates harm tech and other growth firms by increasing the cost of borrowing money to fuel fast development, recent experience shows otherwise.
In the early phases of tightening cycles, technology equities tend to decrease, but eventually recover and recoup losses. The Nasdaq 100, a selection of some of the most important tech firms trading on the Nasdaq, has actually climbed during all four Fed tightening cycles, exceeding the S&P 500 by the end of three of them.
This includes a stunning 59% increase during the 1999-2000 hiking cycle, which corresponded with the closing phases of the dot-com surge, but it crashed after the Fed had done rising rates. It also increased 36% between December 2015 and December 2018, when quickening economic growth pushed the Fed to hike rates from record-low levels.
Between March and late December of last year, the Nasdaq 100 plummeted by a quarter, but has since rebounded and is presently 5% higher than it was before the Fed began hiking interest rates.
During the first two months of the last tightening cycle, the index plummeted 14% within two months of the first rate rise, amid a larger stock market slump, but had completely recovered by July.
It increased through a sequence of eight rate rises over the following two and a half years, finishing more than a third higher than before the tightening.