GOLDMAN SAYS ANOTHER HIKE IN OCTOBER — SIXTEEN OF EIGHTEEN FED FORECASTS AGREE — THE CHAIRMAN DID NOT FILE ONE

Goldman Sachs now expects the Federal Reserve to raise rates another quarter point in October, reversing its own call for a pause. Traders put it a little better than a coin flip.

Both are reading the same sheet. On September 16 the Fed published the page where each policymaker marks where he thinks rates end the year. Two marked 3.875 percent, which is where rates sit right now. Twelve marked 4.125, which is one more hike. Four marked 4.375, which is two.

Nineteen people sit on that committee. Eighteen marked the page.

The one who did not is the chairman. Kevin Warsh said so out loud in the room: “It reflects the views of my colleagues on the Committee, but—as in June—I have not offered a projection of my own.”

So the forecast everyone is trading on leaves out the man who runs the meeting, and he says June was the same.

Two meetings are left. October 27 and 28, then December 8 and 9. The first one lands six days before the election.

Somebody did put a number down. Hours after the Fed capped its range at 4 percent, the Treasury sold a seventeen-week bill at 4.030 percent. That bill has to live through both meetings. It priced above the ceiling on the day the ceiling was set.