The Federal Reserve held its target rate at 3.50-3.75% on July 29, the fifth straight meeting without a change, on a 9-3 vote. Three regional bank presidents dissented in favor of a quarter-point hike. The outcome matched what Polymarket's "Fed Decision in July" event had priced as the favorite all along - but only barely: fifteen minutes before the 2:00pm ET announcement, the no-change contract was trading at 76.35c against a 25-basis-point-hike price of 23.45c, not the lopsided 86c-to-13c split this site covered eight days earlier. Numbers below are from the Gamma and CLOB APIs, fetched 2026-07-30 09:15 UTC.
01The voteNine to hold, three to hike
The committee had held its target range steady for four straight meetings coming into July, most recently a unanimous 12-0 vote on June 17. This was the first split decision under Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, and the first dissent of any kind since he took the gavel. Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, and Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan all "preferred to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 1/4 percentage point at this meeting," per the post-meeting statement. All three dissents ran hawkish - nobody on the committee argued for a cut.
Warsh has been deliberately terse compared to his predecessors, but the statement was specific about the source of the disagreement: "elevated uncertainty that owes, in part, to the conflict in the Middle East," on top of inflation still running hot from supply shocks that have driven up prices in certain sectors, including energy.
02The board, fifteen minutes outFive outcomes, still mutually exclusive
Polymarket splits a Fed decision into five separately-traded Yes/No markets rather than one multi-way pick, one contract per plausible move. The design keeps the separate books honest against each other: on July 22 the five prices summed to 100.35c, and fifteen minutes before this meeting's gavel they summed to 100.45c.
FED DECISION IN JULY, 17:45 UTC (15 MIN OUT) PRICE
No change (3.50-3.75%) 76.35c
Hike 25bps (to 3.75-4.00%) 23.45c
Hike 50+bps 0.35c
Cut 25bps (to 3.25-3.50%) 0.25c
Cut 50+bps 0.05c
Every one of those five books resolved within minutes of the 2:00pm ET statement: no-change settled at 100c, the other four at 0c.
03A week of second-guessing93c to 72c and back to par
The no-change price didn't drift in a straight line toward its 100c finish. It opened the week nine trading days out at 93c, fell through the low 80s as hike bets built, bottomed near 72c twice - on July 23 and again on July 28 - then climbed back into the high 70s only to dip once more the morning of the decision itself. Cooling inflation data that same week (noted when this site covered the 86c-to-13c split on July 22) didn't stop the hike price from climbing further anyway; the Middle East uncertainty the statement later named was already in the tape.
September now leans hike
Attention has already moved to the next meeting, September 15-16 - the one with a Summary of Economic Projections and the dot plot alongside it. "Fed Decision in September?" is the fourth most-traded event on Polymarket right now, $2.33M in 24-hour volume against $2.21M of resting liquidity. Its prices currently run the opposite direction from where July finished:
FED DECISION IN SEPTEMBER PRICE 24H
No change (3.50-3.75%) 38.50c -2.0c
Hike 25bps (to 3.75-4.00%) 56.50c +1.0c
Cut 25bps (to 3.25-3.50%) 2.55c -1.45c
Hike 50+bps 1.40c +0.25c
Cut 50+bps 0.95c -1.0c
Both books sit at a tight 1c spread: no-change bids 38c against a 39c ask, and the hike contract bids 56c against a 57c ask, each with tens of thousands of shares resting on both sides. A quarter-point hike is the single favorite for September even though the committee just held for a fifth straight time - consistent with wire reporting this week that broader rate markets are now pricing two 25-basis-point hikes somewhere in 2026, not zero. The three July dissents didn't get their hike in July; September is where the market thinks they might.
05Watching a multi-outcome eventFive books, one screen
A Fed decision split into five mutually-exclusive contracts is easy to misread one market at a time - a hike contract sitting at 23c looks like a side bet until you see the no-change contract sitting at 76c right next to it. In polymarket-tui, opening the event lists every outcome's price and 24-hour move in one table, and drilling into any one shows its live order book and price history inline. No account is needed to browse.
$ uv tool install polymarket-tui
$ polymarket-tui
The install page has Homebrew and one-liner options.