Which rate is his rate?
The Fed raised its target range on September 16, and the client’s first question was the one on every advisor’s phone that week: what did that just do to me? His advisor had already dropped the June statement into Helmsted and talked through the holdings, sleeve by sleeve: a small bond allocation, close to half of it floating rate, hedged or negative duration; a risk parity fund and a convertible fund with duration hidden inside them; REITs, a utility and infrastructure income priced off long yields; and a large equity book. The ask that followed was one sentence:
“Make an interactive visual that lets him play with short term rates and the 10 year and see what may happen to the portfolio.”
What came back. Two rates, treated as equals. The front end, what the Fed sets, and the long end, the 10 year Treasury the market sets, each with its own slider from -150 to +300 bp, and six preset scenarios above them (no change, three more hikes, all rates rise, only the Fed moves, only the 10 year moves, rates fall back). Every holding carries a key rate mix, so its effect divides exactly between the two rates, and each panel reports what its rate caused: at three more hikes and a modest long end move, the front end accounts for -$620 and the 10 year for -$5,889, 9.5 times the work. The front end panel also carries the number only the Fed can move, forward annual income: +$629 a year as the floating rate notes, ultra short paper and cash reset, offsetting 102 percent of the price move. Underneath: every sleeve as one bar split by driver, the yield curve today against the scenario, and a register of every duration and response assumption, each tagged disclosed or estimate, each editable, and each group explained: what effective duration means and the normal range for short, core and long funds; why REITs and utilities are held at -3 to -6; why banks carry a positive sign. And between the panels and the summary band sits the judgment call: a slider for how much stocks care about the 10 year, from 0 (a growth-driven rise, prices hold) through the usual working range to -4 (a 2022-style repricing), with a live split of the 10 year’s effect into bond duration and equity response.
So the conversation with the client: push the Fed to +300 bp on its own and the portfolio gives up $2,559 in price while forward income rises $2,518 a year, close to a wash. Push the 10 year to +300 bp on its own and it loses $35,583, and $12,796 of that is bond duration alone, before any equity response. The Fed was never his rate risk. Duration was, and it sits in the municipal, multisector, mortgage and securitized sleeves, in the risk parity fund that holds long Treasuries and TIPS inside it, and in the income equities valued off long yields. The equity responses are the one input on the page with no measurement behind them, so they are made in the open: the slider sits at -1.5, and at 0 the 10 year’s +300 bp still costs $18,407, $12,796 of it bond duration.
Getting creative with materials with Helmsted
The first version was not the final one. Each round was a plain-language ask: treat the two rates as equals in two panels rather than one blended shock; draw both response curves on one shared scale so the flat panel reads as flat; mark where rates stood on the statement date and where they stand today, so the move that already happened is shaded rather than counted as a scenario; put forward income next to the price move so the client sees the two work against each other; put the one unmeasured assumption, how much stocks care about long yields, on its own slider with a plain description of each setting rather than buried in a footnote; and end with an assumptions register where every duration is tagged disclosed or estimate, explained in a sentence, and can be changed on the page.
Two rates beat one shock. A single “rates up 100” scenario hides the whole story here. Split by driver, the Fed panel is nearly flat and the 10 year panel is not. The move already made. Shading the statement-to-today strip stops a client from pricing in a rise that has already happened. An assumption you can see is an assumption you can argue with. Putting the equity response on a slider, with what each level has looked like in practice, is what makes the equity figures honest instead of a blind hit to the stock book.
One thing makes all of it work: context. Helmsted needs the account statement with every position and market value, fund documents for effective duration and key rate exposure where they exist, today’s rate levels against the statement date, and the advisor’s own judgment on any equity response. Where a duration is not disclosed it is estimated, tagged as such, and listed as the input most worth verifying.