Fed hold divergence widens to 4.5 points across venues

Hold leads, but the spread needs qualification

An unchanged rate decision remains the leading outcome for the Oct 27–28, 2026 Federal Open Market Committee meeting, according to predictionmarketspicks.com. However, the supplied headline and summary describe a larger gap between venues than the accompanying tracker’s daily-close table supports.

The summary, published Oct 12, 2026 at 1:54 PM ET, puts hold probabilities at 84.5% on Kalshi, 82.5% on Polymarket and 80.0% in CME futures-implied pricing—a 4.5-percentage-point spread. The tracker, marked updated Oct 12 at 2:00 PM ET, instead lists Oct 12 daily closes of 80.5%, 79.5% and 78.0%, respectively, for a 2.5-point spread. The provided material does not reconcile those readings.

A wider gap, but not the headline figure

On the tracker’s daily-close series, the hold spread increased from 1.5 percentage points on Oct 11 to 2.5 points on Oct 12. Hold probabilities fell across all three venues from Oct 11 readings of 83.5% on Kalshi, 83.5% on Polymarket and 82.0% in futures-implied pricing.

Separately, the tracker’s live Kalshi snapshot assigns 81% to a hold, 18% to a hike and 1% to a cut. Its cross-venue board identifies a 4.5-percentage-point difference for a 25bp hike, between Kalshi and futures—not for the hold outcome. These distinct figures should not be treated as interchangeable.

What the comparison measures

According to predictionmarketspicks.com, the comparison uses Kalshi’s KXFED ladder, Polymarket’s international per-meeting book and probabilities derived from the CME fed funds futures curve using the published FedWatch methodology. The tracker limits this comparison to the next meeting, where it says Kalshi’s cumulative rate-level contract and the per-meeting markets address the same outcome.

The futures reading is a derived probability rather than a contract price. The tracker maps it into cut, hold and hike categories and cannot represent a 50bp outcome; those entries appear as dashes, not 0%. Polymarket US also has a separate order book from the international market used here.

What it means for prediction markets

• The direction is clearer than the magnitude: Hold leads across venues, but the supplied tracker supports a 2.5-point Oct 12 daily-close gap, not the summary’s 4.5 points.
• Outcome and timestamp matter: The live Kalshi snapshot, daily-close series and 25bp-hike comparison are separate observations.
• Venue comparisons require care: CME figures are model-derived probabilities, while the Polymarket readings refer specifically to its international book.