I Was Wrong on the Fed. The Window Wasn't.

I said no hike on September 16. The Fed hiked 25 basis points to 3.75%-4.00%, 12-0 (Federal Reserve statement). On September 10 I wrote that a hike would withdraw the call (the note). Withdrawn. No footnotes.

Three things, and I am not going to dress them up.

I priced politics. Two weeks of public pressure from the White House bought exactly zero votes. I treated that pressure as raising the bar for a hike. The committee did not blink. I did.

I let the market do the Fed's job. A 10-year near 5% was, I argued, tightening enough. Warsh had already said at Jackson Hole that he did not consider financial conditions restrictive (speech). He meant it. The 10-year finished September 16 at about 5.02% (market close) and the Fed hiked anyway. Both happened. Neither replaced the other.

I named the signal and ignored it. Core CPI at 0.3% and shelter turning back up were in Friday's review. I wrote "harder to dismiss" and then dismissed them. That is the sentence I would take back.

On August 17 I froze September 9-16 as the second and stronger repricing window (the original), and repeated the dates on August 29 and September 1 without moving them. What landed inside it: the first Fed hike since 2023, the 10-year above 5%, Brent crude above $100 a barrel, five S&P 500 declines in six sessions. September 8 close to September 16 close: SPY -1.6%, QQQ -1.9%, SOXX -5.0%, GLD -2.0%. The equity declines were larger than in the first window; gold's was smaller than its earlier 5.8%. Under the grading rules published in August, that is Confirmed. Two windows, two confirmations, dates and hashes set in August. The October 1 scorecard makes it official.

What failed was the call I stacked on top of it on September 10: no hike, entry window. The frozen path said cautious through mid-September. I overrode it. The override was the wrong half. The dates told me when. I am done speaking for them on which way.

TACO. Trump answered the hike by demanding rates at 1% or less and saying he still has confidence in Warsh (report). He wants 1%. He just got a hike into $100 oil, seven weeks before a midterm. That gap does not stay quiet. The thesis stays, on one condition: it now needs an action, not a post. No policy move by the October FOMC and I drop it.

Entry window, not exit. Under water at the September 16 close, and I am holding it. The hike is in the price now, and a 5% ten-year is the kind of pain that produces responses, not the kind that gets ignored. I wrote down on September 8, before the window opened, how this gets judged: any close below 98% of SPY's September 4 close of 770.19, about 754.79, is a significant shock; both the September 17 and 18 closes back at or above 770.19 is quick repair; both below the 98% line is persistent damage; anything else is intermediate. September 16 closed at 754.05. Shock triggered. Repair or damage gets decided by Friday's close, and I will print it either way.

Frozen on August 17, ratings set before any of this happened. September 17-30 at 3/5: the frozen path calls it conditional stabilization. October 3 to November 13 at 4/5, three peaks around October 2-4, October 24-30 and November 13, with earnings season and the October FOMC inside it: the frozen path calls it a revision phase, not a trend. November 29 to December 12 at 5/5: the frozen path looks for selective recovery if credit holds. Those calls are already on the record and will be graded as written. This week showed what the ratings are: stress clusters where they say it will. Direction is on me, and after this week I owe it more evidence.

The September 18 follow-through and the October 1 scorecard come here, with this call beside them.

Disclosure: the author holds a long position in GLD.

Market data: SPY, QQQ, SOXX and GLD historical closes; S&P 500 session count from the September 16 market report; Brent from the NYSE midday update.

Public forecast record and personal judgment, not personalized investment advice or an instruction to transact. Past samples and historical observations do not guarantee future performance.

This Free website mirror preserves the Perchery article dated 2026-09-16. Original content ID: perchery-2026-09-16-fed-hiked-call-withdrawn. Section headings label the original movement; the first-person interpretation remains Perchery's. This import does not convert the source into a Quant-native empirical audit.

Substack: https://perchery.substack.com/p/i-was-wrong-on-the-fed-the-window

X: https://x.com/readperchery/status/2100405050581393419

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/perchery.bsky.social/post/3mvokwfdsys2f

Information cutoff: September 16, 2026, after the US close. The October 1 scorecard remains open in this dated record; the September 17-18 follow-through was later posted as a Substack Note: https://substack.com/@perchery/note/c-340887985. Inline link markup is adapted to plain text; original source URLs follow in order of appearance.

Related Perchery note (not mirrored): https://substack.com/@perchery/note/c-338964256

Related Perchery follow-through note (not mirrored): https://substack.com/@perchery/note/c-340887985

Withdrawal record (x): https://x.com/readperchery/status/2100401760128909416

Withdrawal record (bluesky): https://bsky.app/profile/perchery.bsky.social/post/3mvok67n6n226

Withdrawal record (substack_note): https://substack.com/@perchery/note/c-334334603

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20260916a.htm

https://substack.com/@perchery/note/c-334334603

https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/warsh20260828a.htm

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/stock-market-today-sept-16-213559592.html

https://perchery.substack.com/p/i-missed-headline-cpi-i-still-expect

https://quant.zylotechnology.com/research/perchery-2026-08-17-east-west-equity-gold-trend-summary

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-slams-the-fed-rate-hike-says-he-told-warsh-you-might-as-well-vote-with-the-board-205145796.html

https://stockanalysis.com/etf/spy/history/

https://stockanalysis.com/etf/qqq/history/

https://stockanalysis.com/etf/soxx/history/

https://stockanalysis.com/etf/gld/history/

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/markets-news-sep-16-2026-104332161.html

https://e.nyse.com/mac-desk-midday-market-update

Editorial research and personal judgment, not personalized investment advice or an instruction to transact.