To Hike or Not to Hike

Our Global Head of Macro Strategy Matthew Hornbach and Chief U.S. Economist Michael Gapen look at what could speed up tightening, what’s next for Treasury yields, and how the Fed can skip a hike now while signaling that more are coming.

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Matthew Hornbach: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Matthew Hornbach, Global Head of Macro Strategy at Morgan Stanley.

Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Chief U.S. Economist.

Matthew Hornbach: Today, the challenge facing the Fed: to not hike rates while still convincing investors that you think rate hikes are coming.

It's Tuesday, October 27th at 11am in New York.

So Mike, how do you think the Fed and Chairman Warsh in particular is going to deal with this challenge?

Michael Gapen: Well, I think the way that he can do it is to say, ‘Obviously we already did hike. So, we've started a process. You know we're serious about bringing inflation down in a timelier fashion. So essentially the question is: Do we want to raise rates at every meeting or do we want to take an action, assess incoming data and take a different action?’

So I do think the message here can be balanced in a way that says, ‘We didn't hike rates today. We didn't feel a tremendous sense of urgency to raise rates today. But we think more work is needed.’

So I'm not sure that there's urgency to raise rates every meeting. But you can still suggest that rates are going to go higher.

You can see I'm having trouble articulating the story as well. Warsh may have some of the same difficulty, but I think that's the basic message is – taking an action, assessing its effect, deciding to take another action.

Matthew Hornbach: At the Jackson Hole Symposium in August, Chairman Warsh gave a speech, and in the speech, he invoked this imagery of going on a hike around the mountains of Jackson Hole.

And he told us that there were, in essence, two types of hikes that one could go on around Jackson Hole. A more leisurely hike and a more aggressive hike around the mountains. Presumably because we don't think the Fed will hike rates at this meeting. Presumably the idea that he has in his head today is to go on a leisurely hike.

But if that's the case, how long does a leisurely hike last? How…

Michael Gapen: They can both be the same.

Matthew Hornbach: … long will the hike be.

Michael Gapen: Yes. So I think that I would interpret the leisurely hike also as the difference between, I think, what economists euphemistically call a recalibration of the policy stance – as opposed to a more aggressive tightening cycle.

So one's kind of leaning against the wind while the other one is trying to change the course of the economy. So I think you're right. And he called the leisurely hike the Ben Bernanke hike and as opposed to the Don Kohn aggressive hike. That's inside Fed speak if you know your former Fed staff.

And I think what the data is telling the Fed, on one hand growth is certainly resilient, and inflation is sticky. But the labor market doesn't look like it's overheating. We're only adding about 50,000 jobs a month. The unemployment rate is low, that's true. But wage growth is actually decelerating.

So from my perspective, and I think their perspective, even with the AI investment boom, there's not a lot of evidence the broader economy is overheating. And that's where I think the urgency story fits in. Are they behind? Do they need to get on top of something?

I think the answer to that is no. So you end up with this measured recalibration: Hey, we cut 75 basis points last year to support the labor market, should probably reverse those. That's what we should be thinking. We're not thinking we need to go all the way back to 2023 highs, which would be the more aggressive tightening cycle.

That's the way I split it out.

Matthew Hornbach: So what would have to happen with the weather in Jackson Hole to change the mind of the committee to go on a more aggressive hike? Maybe to get back into the lodge before the weather really turns inclement? What would have to happen in the economic data, do you think, to change their mind?

Michael Gapen: Well, I think that the most likely story there. I mean, what macro data would make them do that sooner than later would just be inflation has a lot more momentum than they think. Rather than being flat or decelerating slowly, it actually starts to firm.

So, the actual data that they have in hand, they wouldn't even have to decide where it's coming from. But if inflation's firming, they have to get on top of it. That could certainly shift them to hikes every meeting. So, I'll put that down as the most likely.

The other would be just what I said about the labor market. You would need evidence that says, "Wow, look at that labor market. Employment growth is picking up, the unemployment rate's moving lower, and wage growth is turning and starting to firm."

So that would tell you what was kind of a narrow business spending story is now a broad-based overheating story. That's likely to be a much-more-slower-moving train. But certainly that could get the Fed to more rate hikes in 2027 than we're thinking.

Matthew Hornbach: On the inflation point that you're raising here. One of the statistical quirks in how the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis put together the inflation data is that in the first month or two of the year, you typically have seen the seasonally adjusted inflation data come in much stronger. And then in the final couple of months of the year, you've tended to see inflation data come in lower than what you might otherwise expect – because these statistical agencies have had difficulty properly seasonally adjusting the data.

So presumably, because this has been going on for a couple of decades, we'll see this “residual seasonality" again in 2027. Of course, we may not. But if we do, how do you think the Fed will deal with that? Because that could very well show us that inflation is picking back up…

Michael Gapen: That residual seasonality, you're correct, it's still present in the data. There are many firms in different industries that raise their prices once a year. It varies over time. That's why the seasonal adjustment process doesn't capture it.

So we get big, kind of, one-off annual increases in January and February. The Fed knows this, you know this, I know this. But the point is to decide either to stop raising rates, or maybe even at some point to cut rates, you have to ascertain where the underlying trend is. So this makes it harder for them to know what the underlying trend is.

So in our view, it actually means you still get one additional rate hike in March, then after that, it only starts to become clear that inflation is decelerating and the Fed stops hiking.

So in my view, I think the way that they deal with it is they have to wait and get more data to decide that inflation's either going in the direction they want or it's not going in the direction they want.

So Matt, I'd like to turn it back to you if I can. We've seen a lot of volatility in the Treasury market. As you know, for many months yields were backing up. The 10-year Treasury yield peaked above 5.25. It's now back down to about 5 percent. How do you read what's happening in the Treasury market today?

Matthew Hornbach: So the biggest explanatory factor in the sell-off in the Treasury market since, really since the beginning of March, has been a combination of what has happened with energy prices. Both outside of the country and within the country. And then, how the central bank ended up shifting its perspective on rate policy as a result of the effects of these higher energy prices on underlying inflation.

And so, as the Fed transitioned from easing monetary policy in 2025 to now tightening monetary policy in 2026, and on your forecasts into 2027, the bond market had to reprice. And this is a typical behavioral response to a big change in monetary policy expectations.

The more recent price action in the Treasury market, where the 10-year yield went from 5 percent up to 5.25 percent, we think was driven much more by technical flows related to a very large fixed income marketplace that includes more than just U.S. Treasury securities.

Of course, we have agency mortgage-backed securities. There's a huge corporate bond market as well. And so, we see the last 25 basis points as more of a technical dynamic that was driving yields to those peak levels. And once those technical flows stopped, then we saw yields settle back down to a level that was more aligned with fair value, given how the Fed is expected to behave with monetary policy.

But what that means, though, is that as the data come in over the course of the next several quarters, how the market thinks about the path of Fed policy over the course of 2027 will become an increasingly important factor in the Treasury market once again.

So if the investor base decides that maybe the Fed, after having delivered these rate hikes that you're expecting, is comfortable keeping rate policy where it is. And as the disinflationary process resumes, might even consider reversing some of these rate hikes that they have put into place, I would expect 10-year Treasury yields to fall alongside – of those expectations for monetary policy.

So ultimately, we have had a big move in the U.S. Treasury market this year. It has been very much aligned with how investors have thought about the changing narrative around Fed policy. And so 2027 will likely hold more of the same.

As we make our mind up about where the Fed is heading with monetary policy, we will very likely see the bond market move in sympathy with that. And I guess we'll keep an eye on inflation, the labor market, as well as the Treasury market as we look forward towards the next FOMC meeting in early December. And considering the question again: hike or no hike?

Thanks for this, Mike.

Michael Gapen: Thanks for having me on, Matt.

Matthew Hornbach: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.