How the contract works
A contract on this outcome is priced between $0 and $1, and the price is simply what buyers and sellers currently agree the chance is. Kalshi's unchanged contract at 82% means one contract costs about $0.82. If the FOMC statement on 29 July 2026 shows the same upper bound as before the meeting, that contract settles at $1.00, a gain of about $0.18 on the $0.82 paid. If the upper bound moves in either direction, it settles at $0, and the $0.82 is gone. A price of 0.30 on a different contract would mean the market thinks that outcome happens roughly three times in ten. Settlement here follows the published statement, with the resolution date given as 30 July 2026. Until settlement, a position can normally be sold back into the market at whatever the price is at that moment, rather than held to the end.
Yes99%
No1%
Probability
How the price has moved
The aggregate first recorded on 29 July 2026 at 100%, and across 815 observations the tracked range runs from 0% to 100% — a spread produced by following several mutually exclusive brackets at once rather than by any collapse in the unchanged outcome. Within the individual contracts, the pattern has been stability at the extremes: the hold contracts high, the 25 basis point cut in the teens, everything else at or near zero. That flatness is itself the story. A market this heavily traded that does not move in the final hours before a decision is one that considers the question close to resolved, and the only remaining uncertainty priced anywhere on the board is the quarter-point cut bracket at 18%.
Analysis
Context
The Federal Open Market Committee, the twelve-member body that sets the US policy rate, met on 28 and 29 July 2026. At the end of the second day it publishes a statement announcing the target range for the federal funds rate — a band, quoted with a lower and an upper bound, within which the Fed steers overnight lending between banks. This market turns entirely on the upper bound of that range: if it is the same figure as before the meeting, the outcome is YES.
The FOMC has eight scheduled meetings a year, and most of them end with no change. That is the base rate against which any given meeting is priced. Between meetings, traders reprice the probability of a move as inflation prints, payrolls reports and public remarks by Fed officials arrive; by the time the committee is actually sitting, the pricing normally reflects whatever guidance the Chair and the regional presidents have given in the preceding weeks.
What makes this page unusual is where it sits in the calendar. The decision is not weeks away. It is the same day the market resolves. The prices below are therefore not a forecast of a distant event so much as a near-final read on a decision that either has just been taken or is minutes from being published.
Start with the headline discrepancy, because it looks alarming and is not. The aggregated consensus across all listed contracts is 29%, and the spread between the highest and lowest venue is 99.9 percentage points. That is not a disagreement about Fed policy. The venues list several mutually exclusive brackets side by side — no change, a 25 basis point cut, a 50 basis point cut, a hike — and averaging them together drags the number down. Read like for like, the picture is tight: unchanged trades at 100% on Polymarket and 82% on Kalshi, a 25 basis point cut at 18% on Kalshi, and every remaining bracket at 1% or 0%. Two Binance Wallet contracts on a 50 basis point or larger cut are at 0%.
The 18% on Kalshi's cut bracket is the only genuinely contested number on the board. It says the market attaches roughly a one-in-five chance to a quarter-point reduction and essentially no chance to anything larger, and no chance at all to a hike. That shape matters more than the level. A market that prices a single alternative and rounds every other possibility to zero is a market that has already narrowed the question to hold versus one small cut — the classic configuration going into an FOMC statement where the direction of travel is understood and only the timing is in doubt.
The gap between Polymarket at 100% and Kalshi at 82% on the same question is the second thing worth explaining. At the extremes, prediction market prices stop being a clean probability and start reflecting how much capital anyone is willing to tie up for a few hours of return. A contract at 100% has no room left to move up; a contract at 82% still does. Some of that difference is different contract wording and different resolution sources, some of it is that the two venues have different populations of traders and different costs of holding a position to settlement. Neither reading should be treated as more authoritative than the other, but the direction they agree on is unambiguous.
Volume backs the pricing up. Across all venues, $207,457,992 has traded on this cluster of contracts, with the largest single pool at $37,309,269 on the Polymarket unchanged contract and $23,802,367 on Kalshi's. Those are not thin books producing noise. When a question this heavily traded converges on a single outcome, the price is carrying real information about what participants expect the statement to say.
One caveat on the history. The market's aggregate was first recorded on 29 July 2026 at 100%, and 815 price observations since show a range of 0% to 100%. That range is an artefact of tracking several brackets at once — the 0% end is the hike and large-cut contracts, which have been near worthless throughout, not evidence that the hold outcome ever collapsed. There is no recorded stretch of this market in which unchanged was seriously in doubt.
What moves the probability
The decision is today
The FOMC's two-day meeting concluded on 29 July 2026, and the statement is published on the second afternoon under the Fed's standard practice. With hours rather than weeks to run, there is almost no time for new information to arrive. This is the dominant reason the prices are pinned at the extremes.
The 25 basis point cut bracket
Kalshi prices a quarter-point reduction at 18%, and that is the only alternative with meaningful support. If that outcome lands, the unchanged contract settles at zero regardless of how small the move is — the rules treat any change in the upper bound as NO. It is the single scenario that decides this market.
Nothing larger is priced
Every bracket beyond a quarter-point sits at 1% or 0%, including two separate Binance Wallet contracts on a cut of 50 basis points or more, both at 0%. Markets have effectively ruled out a large move and a hike entirely. That removes the tail risk that would otherwise keep the hold price further from 100%.
Venue mechanics at the extremes
The 18 point gap between Polymarket's 100% and Kalshi's 82% on the same question reflects contract construction and the cost of holding capital into a same-day settlement, not a difference of view on Fed policy. Readers comparing headline numbers across sites will see this gap and should read it as plumbing. It explains price differences without changing the expected outcome.
Depth of trading
More than $207 million has changed hands across the listed contracts, with the two largest unchanged markets alone accounting for over $61 million. Deep books at extreme prices are harder to dismiss as noise than thin ones. This raises confidence that the pricing reflects a consensus rather than a handful of positions.
The case for
- The FOMC leaves the target range alone at most of its eight scheduled meetings each year, and holding is the default absent a clear reason to move.
- Both venues quoting the unchanged contract directly — Polymarket at 100% and Kalshi at 82% — point the same way, with more than $61 million traded between them.
- The market has priced out every alternative except a single quarter-point cut, meaning the hold outcome only has to survive one specific scenario rather than several.
- With the meeting concluding on 29 July 2026 and settlement dated 30 July 2026, there is effectively no window for new data or commentary to shift the committee.
The case against
- Kalshi's 18% on a 25 basis point cut is not a rounding error; roughly one time in five, an outcome priced there occurs.
- The settlement rule is strict — any change in the upper bound, in either direction, resolves the market NO, so even the smallest reduction is enough.
- A price of 100% on one venue while another quotes 82% shows that not everyone in the market treats the outcome as fully settled.
- FOMC decisions are made behind closed doors and are not pre-announced; the committee's actual vote is unobservable until the statement is published.
What to watch
The FOMC statement following the 28–29 July 2026 meeting, published at federalreserve.gov on the second afternoon, is the whole event. The line to read is the target range for the federal funds rate and specifically its upper bound: identical to the pre-meeting level resolves YES, any change resolves NO. Secondary detail in the same release — the vote tally, any dissents, and changes to the language on the balance sheet — will not affect settlement but will shape pricing for the next meeting. Settlement is dated 30 July 2026, so the contracts should be resolved within a day of publication.
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