Note: All market prices are as of 11 September 2026. The decision lands on 16 September. Several of the sub-markets below are thinly traded, which is flagged where it matters.
1. Two live outcomes, three dead ones
A 25 basis point increase prices at 60.5 percent. No change prices at 39.5 percent. Between them that is the entire probability.
A 50 basis point increase prices at 0.8 percent, a 25 basis point cut at 0.5 percent and a 50 basis point cut at 0.1 percent.
The volume runs the other way, as it has all week. The two live outcomes hold $50.5M. The three dead ones hold $65.8M, with the cut leg alone carrying $34.8M.
2. October dips and December does not
This is the most useful thing on the board this week and almost nobody quotes it.
A hike on 16 September prices at 60.5 percent. A hike at the October meeting prices at 32.5 percent. A hike in December prices at 59.5 percent.
If the market simply expected tightening, October and December would both sit high. If it expected one move and a stop, both would sit low. Instead it expects a move, a pause, and then another move.
Read that against yesterday's piece and it fits. The end-2026 book's modal outcome is 4.0 percent, one quarter point above today. But 4.25 percent prices at 23.9 percent, and that second hike is where it comes from.
3. There is a market on the whole path
A separate contract prices the full sequence across September, October and December.
Hike, pause, hike leads at 22 percent. Pause, pause, pause is next at 21 percent. Hike, hike, pause prices at 18.5 percent, hike, hike, hike at 17.5 percent and hike, pause, pause at 14 percent.
Add the four paths that begin with a hike and they come to 72 percent, which is in the same region as the September book at 60.5 percent and the cumulative October number at 73.5 percent.
One caveat, and it is a real one. This book carries $23.8K and its legs sum to more than 100 percent, which means the quotes are wide and untested. Use the ordering, not the levels.
4. If they hold, four books reprice at once
The September decision carries $116.4M. The cuts book carries $52.2M with zero cuts at 93.0 percent. The 2026 hike book carries $8.88M at 74.5 percent. The year-end rate book carries $6.82M with 4.0 percent at 44.4 percent.
Roughly $184M is positioned, directly or indirectly, on something happening on Tuesday.
A hold does not just resolve one contract. It forces the cuts book to widen, the hike book to lean harder on October and December, and the year-end distribution to lose its first step. All in the same afternoon.
That is why this decision is worth more attention than a single 60.5 percent number suggests. The correlation across these books is high and the resolution is simultaneous.
5. There is no meeting left where a cut is priced
The cut-by-meeting book prices a cut at 0.4 percent for September, 3.4 percent cumulatively by October and 7.5 percent by December.
Every meeting from January through July has already resolved at zero.
So across the entire remainder of 2026, the probability of any cut at any meeting is 7.5 percent. A year ago that number would have been closer to 95 percent.
The other side of the same question
The mirror book prices a hike by the September meeting at 59.5 percent and by the October meeting at 73.5 percent. A separate contract asking simply whether the Fed hikes at all in 2026 prices at 74.5 percent on $8.88M.
Those two agree closely, which is the sort of cross-check worth running before acting on either.
The practical reading for anyone trading Stage 1: Tuesday is the most likely date for the first increase, and it is not the only one. If the Fed holds, the hike does not disappear from the board. It moves to October and December, where it is already priced at 32.5 and 59.5 percent.
Where this goes
Tomorrow the series closes as Stage 1 does. Crypto has rallied roughly a quarter while every one of these numbers moved toward tightening, and that divergence resolves three days later.
Trade it
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