The 6/50 Rule

For more than 50 years, (with limited exceptions, about 4% of the weeks), there has not been a 6-month period during which interest rates did not change at least 50 basis points. The reality is that interest rates are much more volatile than most investors realize. As history demonstrates, almost a third of the time, interest rates change by more than 1% (and over 20% in percentage terms) over all 6-month periods. This set of charts and statistics (a total of five pages) presents the data and a boundary guideline that we can expect interest rates to cross over the next six months.