This tag is central to the Eco3min framework. The real rate — the nominal rate adjusted for expected inflation — is the pivotal variable of modern macro-finance. It determines the true cost of capital, drives the valuation of all assets and reflects the effective stance of monetary policy. When real rates move, everything moves.
A property’s value is its net income capitalized at a rate the market sets, and that rate is anchored to the real interest rate. When real rates rise, the cap rate widens and value compresses, even as rents rise with…
A rental listing leads with a yield. Divide the annual rent by the price and the number looks clean, often 8% or more. What the owner actually keeps, after costs, financing and tax, is a different and smaller number. Between…
Capital income in many systems can be taxed two ways, a flat rate or, by election, a progressive schedule. The choice is not a matter of taste but of arithmetic: for any taxpayer there is a marginal bracket above which…
Cash, regulated savings and the euro compartment of life insurance share a guaranteed nominal capital, hence a real protection that depends entirely on the regime: positive when the credited rate exceeds inflation, silently eroded when inflation pulls ahead. TL;DR Guaranteed…
An asset that pays no income is not free to own. Holding gold means forgoing the real return an inflation-linked bond would pay: that shortfall, the real rate, is its true cost to hold. TL;DR Holding gold means giving up…
Inflation-linked bonds protect the purchasing power of the principal against rising prices, but not against rising real rates. In 2022, despite double-digit inflation, TIPS and OATi ETFs fell, because the real-rate component outweighed the indexation. TL;DR Buying an inflation-linked bond…
Duration measures, in years, how sensitive a bond’s price is to a change in rates. It is duration, not the headline yield, that determines the size of a bond fund’s reaction to a rate move. TL;DR A bond fund's duration…
Why real rates are reasserting themselves as markets' anchor and how to recalibrate investment and financing decisions facing this regime shift.
Real interest rates: why their persistence in positive territory in 2026 is reshaping the rules for bonds, equities, real estate and sovereign debt valuations.
Policy rates, market rates and real rates no longer move in lockstep. Their growing dissociation reshapes how monetary transmission and the macro cycle should be read in 2025-2026.
