Are there (more or less "mainstream", so no prediction markets or things like that) financial instruments available that can be used to hedge against a rise in interest rates? In other words, something which correlates positively with reference interest rates (of the ECB, for instance). What can be used to achieve this?
I have absolutely no experience with these things yet ... but am sure someone here has. A wild guess would be some leveraged bet on bonds. But I'm not sure how strong they really correlate with the precise reference interest rate.
You can use TIPS (treasury inflation protected securities).
They are treasury bonds that pay a fixed interest rate plus an amount equal to inflation.
This would not be a perfect hedge against rising interest rates, but generally inflation and interest rates do rise and fall together, at least in the long term.