RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Citadel, one of the largest hedge funds in the U.S., managing $67 billion in assets, is calling for markets to brace for a 25-basis-point interest rate hike from Chair Kevin Warsh, not in September but later on Wednesday. That would lift the Fed's benchmark borrowing cost to the 3.75%-4% range.
Meanwhile, both crypto and traditional market analysts expect no change. Crypto exchange Kraken's economist Thomas Perfumo put it best: "The most likely outcome of July's FOMC meeting is no change in interest rates."
That tension is why a surprise rate hike Wednesday could send already buoyant Treasury yields higher, creating a headwind for risk assets, including bitcoin and the wider crypto market.
Note that while the consensus favors no change, the market isn't entirely dismissing a hike. The CME Group's FedWatch tool puts the odds of a rate increase at 35.8%, up from 25.7% just a week earlier. But "elevated tail risk" and "the base case" are two very different trades, and right now almost every desk on the Street is positioned for the base case.
Crypto is trading on a cautious note. The upswing in bitcoin, the leading digital asset by market value, has stalled since last Wednesday, with prices pulling back to just under $64,000 from the high of nearly $67,000.
Citadel's rate hike call is less about where the data land and more about tactics, specifically, why Warsh has more to gain from raising rates today than from waiting until September.
A surprise hike Wednesday, Frank Flight, head of macro strategy at Citadel Securities, writes, "would emphatically end the forward guidance era in which every policy move is pre-signaled and act as a cleansing event, forcing markets to price what the data imply the central bank should do rather than what they expect it will do."
It would also "clearly underline Federal Reserve independence after two years in which it has been repeatedly questioned."
Forward guidance is a tool central banks use to signal how they expect interest rates to evolve over the coming months, helping households and businesses adjust consumption, investment, and borrowing without sudden shocks.
Over time, however, forward guidance has, according to many, including Warsh, distorted the market's reaction function to the point where assets began trading off expectations of how the Fed might respond to news and data, rather than on the underlying data itself.
Citadel's deeper argument is about behavior, not optics. Flight's note argues that a surprise hike can reset how firms set prices and workers negotiate wages before the economy actually slows, meaning the Fed ultimately has to tighten (hike rates) less than it would if it waited and moved more gradually.
But that only works if the shock actually lands as a shock. "If Chair Warsh waits until September, he risks muting the impact" because by then the move would look like the same old pre-signaled playbook and "carry far less informational force."
The note argues that the Fed's next move is a rate hike, as both markets and policymakers lean in that direction. CME's FedWatch shows the September hike is a near-done deal.
"If a majority of the FOMC is already likely to support a September hike, and if we are right that Warsh has much to gain by moving in July, it seems unlikely that voting members would oppose the Chair over acting six weeks earlier than they otherwise would," the note said.
This looks all the more plausible against the backdrop of the renewed oil price surge and lingering tensions with Iran, both of which risk adding further inflationary pressure to the global economy.
All things considered, Wednesday's Fed meeting is setting up to be the most interesting one in recent times.
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Markets repositioned since June, but Binance held share (~55% user funds, ~24% spot) and drew net inflows in early July while the tracked market saw outflows.
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