As of Tuesday afternoon, the CME FedWatch Tool shows that traders are pricing in a 63% chance that the federal funds rate will be lowered by a half percentage point to 4.75% to 5% from the current 5.25% to 5.50%. That leaves the odds of a quarter-point reduction to a range of 5% to 5.25% at 37%.

The theory a week ago was that a half-point cut would panic the market on the notion that the Fed knew something about the economy that the markets didn’t. But now we’ve gone from that fear to expecting a half point.

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