Standard Chartered expects the Fed to hike rates in December 2026 (prev. saw no hikes this year)

Calls of this kind from major forecasters have historically mattered less for the name attached than for what they signal about the distribution of Street views: when one house breaks from a consensus of no change, the question is whether it is an outlier or the leading edge of a broader repricing of the path, and past cycles have shown the first mover is sometimes vindicated well before the pack follows. The mechanism runs through the front end and the belly of the curve, where an outright hike expectation re-prices terminal assumptions rather than just the date of the next move, with knock-on for the dollar via rate differentials against peers whose central banks are on a different trajectory. Worth watching is the reasoning behind the call, whether it rests on inflation persistence, labour resilience, or a changed read of the reaction function, since that determines which upcoming releases carry the most weight. Follow-on revisions from other houses and any shift in Fed officials' own language would be the confirmation tells; a lone hawkish outlier tends to fade from pricing, a cluster does not.