Financial Markets & Risk Dynamics

August 28, 2026

The Market, Not The Fed, Now Sets Long Rates

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Torsten Slok

Partner, Chief Economist

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For 30 years, the 10-year Treasury yield fell almost entirely on the handful of days around Fed meetings, and did essentially nothing the rest of the time, see chart below.

That stopped in 2022 after the Fed began to raise interest rates. The 10-year has since risen roughly four percentage points, but almost none of that came on Fed days. The reason is that each hike was largely priced by the time the Committee met, so the FOMC announcement and press conference carried little news for the long end, and the move higher instead came from higher-than-expected CPI prints, stronger payrolls, increasing Treasury supply and a rising term premium, none of which sit on the FOMC calendar.

This raises the question of whether FOMC meetings are still the most important drivers of long rates. With Fed Chair Kevin Warsh having dropped forward guidance, the most likely scenario is that rates become more market-driven and move more outside of FOMC meetings. In other words, this looks less like a post-hiking-cycle anomaly and more like the new regime.

The bottom line is that we should not expect forward guidance from Warsh today at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, but anything he says about framework and the economy, in particular where he sees inflation, unemployment and the neutral rate, could move the long end anyway.

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