fed 50bp hike odds: Half-Point December Move Jumps to 11% After Waller and CPI

The fed 50bp hike odds just woke up: Polymarket's December Fed market priced a half-point (or bigger) hike near 11% Yes at about 05:55 UTC on November 11, up roughly 10 points in a day, after Fed Governor Christopher Waller floated 50 bps and October core CPI came in at exactly the 0.3% he flagged. A quarter-point hike is still the heavy favorite near 85.5%.

What actually happened

Tuesday morning, Waller spoke at the Bank of England Watchers Conference in London. He said he would support a 25 bps hike at the December meeting even if inflation improved. He then raised the stakes, according to Cointelegraph: if core inflation came in at 0.3% or more, "a 50-basis-point hike in the policy rate should be considered," adding that hiking only 25 bps "would put our credibility at risk."

A few hours later the BLS delivered. Headline CPI rose 0.4% in October against a 0.3% forecast, and core rose 0.3% against 0.2%. That is cooler than September's 0.6% headline print, but it hit Waller's trigger right on the nose. We previewed the release in october cpi odds.

The Fed's target range is 3.75% to 4.00% after a quarter-point hike in September and a hold in October. A 50 bps move in December would take it to 4.25% to 4.50%, as Decrypt noted. The two-year Treasury yield, which tracks Fed expectations closely, posted its biggest jump since April 2025, per the same report.

What Polymarket thinks

The December Fed market resolves on the change in the upper bound of the target range in the FOMC statement after the December 8-9 meeting. Moves that do not match a bracket are rounded up to the nearest 25 bps.

At about 05:55 UTC on November 11:

• 25 bps increase: ~85.5% (bid 0.85 / ask 0.86), up about 6 points in a day
• 50+ bps increase: ~11% (bid 0.109 / ask 0.111), up about 10.5 points
• No change: ~3.7%, down about 15 points
• 25 bps cut: ~0.35%; 50+ bps cut: ~0.25%

This is a big, liquid market. Event volume was about $24.9M, with about $7.3M traded in the last 24 hours, one of the most active markets on the whole site. When we wrote fed december hike odds after the October meeting, a quarter-point hike sat near 77.5% and nobody was talking about 50.

Half-point hike odds went from a rounding error to roughly one in nine in a single session.

How to read the fed 50bp hike odds

The crowd agrees with the futures market: a hike is close to locked, the size is the debate. CME FedWatch moved from 76.3% to 96.3% for +25 bps after Waller's speech, then shifted to about 85.3% for +25 and 14.7% for +50 after CPI, Cointelegraph reported. Reuters put analyst estimates of a half-point move near 15% by midmorning, according to Decrypt. Polymarket at 11% sits a bit below those numbers.

STS Digital's Jeff Anderson told Cointelegraph that markets were pricing about 27 bps of tightening for December. He also flagged political pressure: Democrats won both chambers of Congress in last week's midterms, and a blue Congress may push harder on inflation.

One governor is not the committee. Waller is a single vote, and the path from 11% to a real 50 bps hike runs through more data, including PPI on November 13 and the PCE release on November 25 that CoinDesk listed in its CPI preview.

What to do as a reader

If you trade the fed 50bp hike odds, read the bracket rules on the market page and remember the "rounded up" clause. Watch Fed speeches, PPI and PCE, and compare Polymarket with CME FedWatch, because gaps between them can close fast.

For crypto holders, the takeaway is simpler: higher-for-longer rates have been a headwind, and BTC slid toward an 11-week low on this print. Size positions so a hawkish surprise on December 9 does not wreck you. Nothing here is financial advice.