📊 The Fed hiked and stopped pointing down, here's what changes

🏦 The Fed in numbers. The first hike since 2023, and the projection that moved the dollar.

📏 The dot gap. The Fed says one more hike. Futures say around three.

🚦 Three questions after it. What reads differently from here.

✂️ One entry, two pieces. A daily target banked and a weekly one left to run.

✅ One thing worth doing today.

The Fed raised rates by a quarter point on Wednesday, to 3.75% to 4.00%. The vote was 12 to 0 and it's the first hike since July 2023. The statement said it in three words: "Inflation remains elevated."

The hike itself was about 90% priced going in. What moved the dollar was the path after it.

In June the Fed's own median had rates falling to 3.6% by the end of 2027. Now it's 4.1% and staying there, and 16 of the 18 officials pencilled in another hike this year. The dollar had its best day in three months on it.

🎯 The Desk Take: The Fed's median shows one more hike. Futures went home pricing around three more by the first half of next year. I'm calling that the dot gap. If the next inflation prints cool, the market's extra hikes come back out. If they run hot, the Fed moves up to meet the market. Nobody knows which, but every release between now and the next meeting on 27 and 28 October is now the thing that decides it.

Every trade I take goes through the same three questions: is the trend there, is it moving now, and how much is on the line if I'm wrong. The Fed didn't change the questions. It changed how some of the answers read.

Trend. The rate gap now leans toward the dollar, so buying a currency against the dollar needs the bigger trend clearly intact before it counts. A bounce isn't enough.

Momentum. With the 10-year yield around 5%, anything valued on earnings it hasn't made yet gets less forgiveness. On small caps a close above a level tells you more than a touch of it.

Risk. A month ago a hot print meant rate cuts got pushed back. After Wednesday a hot print could mean another hike. So anything held through the jobs report on 2 October or CPI on 14 October gets sized off the distance to the stop and nothing else.

🎯 The Desk Take: The cheapest protection there is costs nothing. One of this week's winners had its stop at break-even going into Wednesday, so the announcement could only pay it or scratch it. It paid, inside the hour. That's the position you want sitting in front of a date nobody can call. Every closed trade goes on a public record with its entry, stop and exit, winners and losers. It's updated every Sunday, not after each trade, so this week's closes show up there this Sunday.

Most people buy a pullback and then go looking for a stop. The better order is the other way round: find where the idea's wrong first, then decide whether the reward's worth it.

I've built a TradingView indicator that does exactly that on the daily chart. The daily 8 and 21 EMA pick the side. Then it takes the ATR, the distance the market normally travels in a day or a week, and draws a red invalidation zone where the idea's wrong plus a target off the same ATR. It shows the daily set and the weekly set together.

Having both sets on one chart lets you split a single entry in two. This month on a currency pair I did exactly that:

1️⃣ Bought once, in two pieces. One with the nearer daily ATR target. One held for the weekly level, with its stop under the weekly invalidation zone.

2️⃣ The daily target paid. I took it and moved the weekly piece's stop up to entry. The week had already travelled 123% of its normal range in four days, so there was no room left in it for the daily piece.

3️⃣ The rest runs. Its stop is at entry, so the worst it can do now is nothing.

🎯 The Desk Take: Banking the daily piece paid for the trade, and that's what lets the weekly piece sit there with a free stop. And to be straight about the tool: its history row, which replays trend turns back through the chart, reads barely above flat on that pair. A trend on its own isn't an edge. The management is where this one paid.

Open your position list and write one thing next to every line: is this carrying full risk into the jobs report on 2 October?

For each one that is, ask whether the stop could be at entry before then. Some can't yet, and that's fine. But if the answer's "full risk" on every line, that's a five-minute job for the weekend.

If you'd rather not work the size out by hand, the position size calculator is free and there's no signup.

2 October, 8:30am ET: September jobs report, off the BLS schedule.

14 October, 8:30am ET: September CPI, off the BLS schedule.

27 and 28 October: the next Fed meeting, off the Fed's calendar.

The same three questions run on every position I take, and every one that closes goes on that public record with its entry, stop, exit and result, the losers included. That record gets updated every Sunday rather than after each trade.

This free letter teaches the mechanics. The paid edition of Inside the Trade goes out three times a week and does a different job: the individual names and the levels behind them, plus the live board they sit on. The RB Trading Journal is 20% off from here, and it keeps the R on every trade for you.

Everything else, the Desk, the journal, the free calculators and where I post, is in one place at start.rbtrading.site.

"See the record" → tradedesk.rbtrading.site/track-record ]

Next Wednesday: where the three questions sit a week on, and whether the dot gap has started closing.

Reply and tell me: did you change anything you hold because of Wednesday's Fed, and was it the size or the stop?

Educational analysis, not financial advice. The rate decision, vote and statement quote are from the Federal Reserve press release of 16 September 2026, and projections from the Fed's Summary of Economic Projections. Futures pricing as reported by Bloomberg and Convera. The indicator's history figures are past price behaviour on one chart, not returns on any account and not a forecast. Past performance is not indicative of future results.