Will 2 Fed rate cuts happen in 2026?

A scenario that was plausible base case forecasting late in one year can become a minority view within months once new shocks and updated guidance enter the picture — and that's exactly the trajectory visible here. Earlier research genuinely treated two cuts as a reasonable central expectation. That framing has since been walked back as new information arrived, which is itself the most important thing to understand about this contract: it's not pricing a static fundamental question, it's pricing the cumulative effect of a shifting macro narrative. The dot plot composition is the clearest signal of where that narrative currently sits. A committee where the largest blocs are split between expecting at least one hike and expecting no change, with only an isolated minority still projecting a cut, is structurally incompatible with a two-cut outcome. Two cuts requires not just a few dovish voices prevailing, but the median of the committee shifting meaningfully away from where it currently sits — a different order of change than one cut requires. The macro path framework is useful for sizing this properly. A hawkish hold-or-hike path and a single late-year cut path both remain live, coherent scenarios under current conditions. Two cuts requires stacking two distinct conditions simultaneously: a genuine growth or inflation downside surprise, and a Fed willing to reverse its current hawkish communication strategy entirely rather than make one cautious adjustment. Requiring both conditions at once is mathematically a smaller probability than requiring either one alone — which is the core reason this sits meaningfully behind the zero-cut and one-cut scenarios. Bottom line: This requires compounding two distinct macro surprises rather than one, which is why it trails the more singular hawkish and single-cut scenarios. Watch whether incoming data shifts the median dot, not just the tails — that's the signal that would actually move this contract.