> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://millionaire-insiders.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Fed Stopped Telling Markets What It Plans to Do Next - URL: https://millionaire-insiders.ghost.io/the-fed-stopped-telling-markets-what-it-plans-to-do-next/ - Published: 2026-10-28T11:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-28T11:30:01.000Z - Author: Daniel Whitmore The Federal Open Market Committee meets today and the policy rate is expected to stay at 3.75% to 4%, with futures pricing roughly an eighty percent chance of no change. The more consequential development is not the decision. It is what the statement will leave out. Since June, under Chair Kevin Warsh, the committee's statements have carried no forward guidance about the likely direction of rates. The document describes conditions and announces the decision, and it stops there. After more than a decade in which markets were told in advance, they are being asked to work it out. ### What forward guidance was doing Guidance was never just courtesy. A central bank that tells markets the policy rate will stay low for an extended period is using the announcement itself as a policy tool, because the medium term interest rates that actually govern mortgages and corporate borrowing are built from expectations about the overnight rate over the coming years. That is the case for it. The case against, which Warsh made before taking the job, is that guidance commits a committee to a path it may need to abandon, and that markets end up trading the central bank's language rather than the economy's data. Removing it returns the burden of forecasting to investors, which is where he argues it belongs. Both arguments are reasonable, and the practical consequence is already visible. Price action around speeches has grown relative to price action around statements, because individual policymakers' remarks are now the main available evidence about where a majority sits. That is a noisier signal than a sentence agreed by the whole committee, and noisier signals produce more volatility around each one. ### Reading a meeting with no guidance in it **Whitmore's Watchlist:** \> **SHY** (iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF): The front end, which prices the next few policy moves and reacts first to any shift in the expected path. \> **USFR** (WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund): A floating coupon that resets with bill yields, so it tracks the policy rate rather than forecasting it. \> **TLT** (iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF): The long end, where the question is the terminal rate and the term premium rather than the next meeting. Three things in today's announcement carry information, and none of them is the headline number. The first is the dissents. Three policymakers dissented in favour of higher rates on July 29, and the September meeting delivered a hike. A dissent count is the closest thing to a vote tally on the next move that a guidance free committee produces, and it is now the most direct evidence available. The second is the description of conditions. With guidance removed, the characterisation of inflation and the labour market is doing the work the guidance sentence used to do, and small changes in that wording carry more weight than they did. The third is the balance sheet. Warsh has said he wants the Fed to become a more passive participant in markets and formed a task force to review the portfolio, which stood around $6.75 trillion in August against roughly $6.5 trillion at the end of last year and a peak near $9 trillion in 2022\. Any change in the reinvestment language would be a larger policy event than a twenty five basis point move, because it affects the supply of duration the market has to absorb. ### Where the actual expectation sits Markets are not confused about direction, only about timing. The December 9 meeting is widely expected to deliver a hike, and that meeting brings updated projections, which are the last formal statement of committee thinking until next year. At September's meeting most policymakers projected one further increase in 2026 and a handful projected two. Further out, fixed income markets have been pricing the possibility of consecutive increases in early 2027 taking short rates toward 5%. Whether that is right matters more to portfolios than today does, because it determines the level at which the cycle ends rather than the route. Inflation has run above the 2% target for five years, and the committee is in tightening mode with growth that has held up and a labour market that has not. A central bank in that position does not need to pre-commit, and under this chair it has chosen not to. **Whitmore's Take**: With guidance gone, the dissent count and the wording on conditions carry the information the statement used to hand over directly. Worth reading those two lines today rather than the rate itself, which is already in the price. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e9/10/e9109ad9-55f9-4e96-a078-46af25115156/content/images/2026/10/fed-without-guidance-2.jpg) *Written by Daniel Whitmore* *Millionaire Insiders*