Fed December Rate Hike Odds: Why RateWatch

FOMC Alerts · October 30, 2026

If you trade the front end into the December Fed meeting, you need a clean read on fed december rate hike odds — not a delayed desk paste. RateWatch is FatTail’s live CME-style calculator on Massive REAL-TIME 30-day fed funds futures (ZQ). As of Friday, October 30, 2026, 5:00 PM ET, our strip shows 69.4% hike / 30.6% hold for the December statement date (December 9), with the funds target still at 3.75–4.00%. Thursday’s close was 77.3% hike. That Friday path is the story. Structure over prediction.

Fed December rate hike odds: Friday’s path

After the October 28 FOMC held 3.75–4.00% on a 10–2 vote (Cook and Hammack preferred +25 bp; no SEP that meeting), December became the next priced node. Warsh has chaired since May 22, 2026 — this was already his fourth meeting as chair.

On RateWatch’s own stamps Friday, Dec hike odds walked roughly 76–77% through the midday window, briefly retested 77.3% near 1:10 PM ET, then stepped down to 70.4% mid-afternoon and closed the 5:00 PM ET stamp at 69.4%. We publish our as-of every time we cite the figure. We do not treat delayed third-party FedWatch-style prints as ours.

Two voters spoke into the tape Friday. St. Louis Fed’s Alberto Musalem, in prepared Shadow Open Market Committee remarks, said: “I judge that additional firming of monetary policy will be necessary, and soon.” Dallas Fed’s Lorie K. Logan told Davidson College students: “It remains clear to me, given the current outlook, that the FOMC needs to implement at least two more 25-basis-point rate increases.” Speeches are commentary energy; the strip still has to clear the data path below.

How RateWatch calculates the odds

RateWatch pulls Massive REAL-TIME ZQ last_trade, converts price to an implied average rate (100 − price), then applies CME FedWatch-style meeting-month day-weighting: months with an FOMC blend pre- and post-meeting rates by days in the month; non-meeting months anchor the level between meetings. The strip becomes conditional probabilities in discrete 25 bp buckets (hold / +25 / …). The widget shows hike, hold, and cut; any weighted expected change in bp is footnote-only.

CME publishes the day-weighted methodology publicly. The factual difference on our desk: we feed Massive REAL-TIME last_trade, not a delayed quote. We are not quoting a live CME FedWatch screen number in this piece. Limitations stay on the label: current target-range assumption, 25 bp steps, ~1-business-day EFFR/SOFR funding lag, and FatTail’s Warsh Watch flag as an overlay — not CME math. For the product comparison angle, see RateWatch vs FedWatch.

The path to December 8–9

The next FOMC is Tuesday–Wednesday, December 8–9 (SEP meeting) on the FOMC meeting schedule. Official blackout runs from Saturday, November 28, 12:00 a.m. ET through Thursday, December 10, 11:59 p.m. ET under the Fed’s external communications policy. After blackout starts, the strip mostly trades the data already in — not fresh official color.

Verified prints that can move Dec odds before blackout (ET; after November 1 clocks are EST):

• Mon Nov 2, 10:00 — ISM Manufacturing (Oct). Diffusion PMI; Prices Paid is the early inflation read. Re-pull RateWatch after the print.
• Tue Nov 3, 10:00 — JOLTS (Sep); midterms all day. Openings/hires/quits bridge into payrolls.
• Wed Nov 4 — ADP private payrolls (Oct); ISM Services at 10:00. ADP is a warm-up for Friday’s BLS — map it to odds, don’t forecast from it.
• Thu Nov 5 — Productivity Q3 (preliminary) and weekly jobless claims; Hammack on an SNB Watchers panel at 8:50; BoE decision earlier that morning.
• Fri Nov 6, 8:30 — Employment Situation (Oct). Last major labor print before the Dec SEP. Bowman speaks at 12:15 (UMiss). University of Michigan preliminary sentiment is also dated that Friday.
• Tue Nov 10, 8:30 — CPI (Oct).
• Tue Nov 18, 2:00 PM — FOMC minutes of the Oct 27–28 meeting (tone check on the hold and the two dissents).
• Wed Nov 25 — Personal income and outlays / PCE (Oct); Beige Book at 2:00 PM. The Fed prefers PCE as its inflation gauge.

Same-day wage context already on the hub: Q3 Employment Cost Index. Soft wages did not erase the December node — they just change how the labor prints above can reprice it.

What it means for 0DTE

• Energy: Scheduled data risk into Dec 8–9, plus Friday’s speaker commentary. Not a policy decision today.
• Premium: Massive REAL-TIME Friday session stamp: SPX 7580.07 (−1.81%), VIX 19.42 (+12.9%). Dec odds and same-day gamma both price front-end path into VIX1D; today’s RateWatch drop ran alongside the equity selloff — no causation claimed.
• Structure: Size for gaps on ISM, payrolls, CPI, and PCE days. Keep max loss known before entry.
• Plan, don’t predict: Desk base rates through Oct 27 (patterns.md): FOMC-day median |SPX| 0.56% vs 0.49% other days (n=93); hold meetings 0.47% median / 1.09% range (n=63). Base rates, not a forecast. Re-pull RateWatch after each print; don’t freeze on Thursday’s 77.3%.

Related reading: December Fed meeting 2026 · FOMC meeting schedule 2026 · RateWatch vs FedWatch · Employment Cost Index Q3 2026 · FOMC Alerts hub

Trade it with structure

Follow the December decision on RateWatch — live ZQ, stamped as-of, same CME-style math the desk uses. Observer is a six-week trial and training program: train with Coach for $17/week. You get everything a full coaching member gets, every week, and the six weeks are designed to install pro trading habits: courses on strategy, process and risk management, live daily coaching, a Discord trade room with hundreds of experienced traders, and the platform (heatmap, GEX tools, risk graph, position analyzer and journal). Start Observer.

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