Fed Chair Transition Tracker

Kevin Warsh chairs his third FOMC meeting on September 15–16, and the market has spent the last two weeks moving toward a hold, not away from one. Kalshi's Categorical prices Fed maintains rate at 71.5% against a 27.5% chance of a 25bp hike—eight points firmer on the hold than it was in early August, with every cut leg priced at half a percent.

The number underneath that consensus is stranger. The single most-traded contract in the September book is the 25bp cut—$217,162 in twenty-four hours, more than the hold leg's $216,881—priced at 0.5%. Add the >25bp cut and >25bp hike legs and $247,044, or 44% of the book's $555,209, traded on three outcomes the same book collectively prices at one and a half cents. Those legs carry $3.96M of open interest.

That pattern repeats in every Fed book on the board. It is the through-line of this workspace: the September decision itself is close to settled in the market's mind, and the money is going somewhere else.

Kalshi's Fed decision in Sep 2026? Categorical is Warsh's next decision and the deepest Fed book listed anywhere—$555,209 in twenty-four hours against $8.9M of open interest. Beside it, Manifold's independent mirror of the same meeting, which prices no change at 76.8% against Kalshi's 71.5% and a hike at 21.9% against Kalshi's 27.5%—five points of cross-exchange spread on the decision, in the direction of the calmer read.

The two outcomes that account for 99% of the September book, priced directly, with the anomaly beside them. A hold at 71.5%, a 25bp hike at 27.5%—and the 25bp cut at 0.5%, which outtraded both. The spread between hold and hike is the market's entire September uncertainty and it moves on labor and inflation prints. The cut leg is not a forecast; it is where the flow is.

Paired with the cut leg: Kalshi's Cumulative rate-level ladder for the same meeting, which prices the outcome rather than the move. It puts the funds rate above 3.75% at 27.5% on $175,881 of open interest—the same number the decision book gives a hike, arrived at independently.

The timing question underneath the meeting-by-meeting books. Kalshi's next Fed rate hike Multiple is a cumulative ladder—before 2027 at 51.5%, before July 2027 at 71.5%, before 2028 at 75%—so the gap between rungs prices when, not whether. Both the before-2027 and before-2028 rungs have come down about five points since early August.

One artifact worth knowing before reading it: the Before July 2026 rung settled No on July 1 and still carries $859,266 of open interest, within five hundred dollars of the live before-2027 rung. Beside the ladder, the October 28 decision—thin at $5,148, but it prices a 25bp cut at 4%, eight times what September does.

Two books that trade Warsh's words rather than his votes. He speaks at Jackson Hole on August 28, and Kalshi lists what he will say: Productivity at 76.5% and AI at 72.5% lead, ahead of Independent / Independence at 66.5% and 2008 / Financial Crisis at 50.5%. Beside it, the September dissent book—Beth Hammack at 61%, Kashkari at 42%, Logan at 34.5%, and Warsh himself at 0.5% to dissent from his own committee.

Both books show the same shape as the decision book. Crypto took $946 of Jackson Hole's $2,133—44% of it—on a leg priced at 14%. Philip Jefferson took $501 of the dissent book's $751—67%—on a leg priced at 7.5%.

The confirmation fight is settled and Powell's run as chair is over. What replaces it is political-risk pricing on the new chair: Kalshi's Trump-criticizes-Warsh ladder prices before January 2027 at 24% on $8,803 of open interest. Its before July 2026 rung has closed the same way the hike ladder's has, and still shows a 50% midpoint against $9,187 of stranded open interest—a second instance of the same reading trap.

Polymarket's Powell-leaves-the-board book was dropped this run: $7 of twenty-four-hour volume against $21,199 of open interest is not a price, and the workspace's cross-exchange weight now sits on the Manifold mirror in the anchor row.

• The consensus firmed and the flow ignored it. A hold at 71.5% is the strongest the September book has priced it, and the day's deepest single contract is a cut at 0.5%. Whether that is tail hedging, Range-book seeding, or someone with a view, it is the largest instance of the pattern in any Fed book right now—and it is not confined to the decision: the dissent book and the Jackson Hole book both put the majority of their volume on single-digit legs.
• Two closed rungs still sit inside live ladders. Before July 2026 on the hike ladder resolved No seven weeks ago and holds $859,266 of open interest; the Trump-criticizes-Warsh ladder has the same structure. Read cumulative ladders rung by rung, not as a shape.
• The hike is deferred, not priced out. Before 2027 at 51.5% against a 27.5% September hike and 23.5% in October: the market's read is that if it does not happen next month, it still probably happens this year.
• The slope has flattened. 51.5% before 2027, 71.5% before mid-2027, 75% before 2028. Only 23 points now separate "in the next eighteen months" from "never in this cycle"—narrower than it was, on a path that supposedly has both directions open.
• What sits between here and the decision. Jackson Hole on August 28, the August CPI print on September 11, and the August jobs report on September 4. The first of those has its own book above.