Wall Street sinks on bets Fed will hike rates this year

Wall Street sinks on bets Fed will hike rates this year

By Sinéad Carew and Sruthi Shankar

Wed June 17, 2026  

It’s amazing how powerful silence can be for, even though our new Fed chair Kevin Warsh said nothing about the policy path of interest rates, the fact that he did not mention a timetable for a rate hike was more than enough to send all three indexes spiraling down like rocks right at 2 pm. What was said was that policy would focus on price stability which could generally mean a hike to water down inflation.

More important, most Fed officials said out loud for the first time that a rate hike this year was likely, vs the mere pessimism of market experts thinking so. Suddenly the consensus is that a rate hike will come not in December but in September and the odds of rates holding steady plummeted to 13% vs 40% just yesterday. The one bit of good news for the day is that retail sales climbed higher than expected, indicating consumers are still spending despite higher gas prices. At 23.66 billion, volume was way higher than the 21.07 average.

DJ: 51,999.67  +328.64       NAS: 26,376.34  -307.60        S&P: 7,511.35  -42.94           6/16

DJ: 51,492.55  -507.12        NAS: 26,021.66  -354.69        S&P: 7,420.10  -91.25           6/17

Wed 6-17-26 5:05 pm Wall Street sinks on bets Fed will hike rates this year | Reuters