Every 2027 plan has a rate assumption in it somewhere. Sometimes it’s explicit, a line in the treasury model that says what the revolver will cost. More often it’s buried in the hurdle rate on a capital project, the financing terms on a customer program, the demand forecast for anything people buy with credit. Wherever it sits, it was usually written in September, and September was a different rate environment from the one the board is approving it into.
What changed while the plan was being built
On September 17 the Federal Reserve raised the top of its target range from 3.75% to 4.00%. Planning cycles that opened the first week of September started before that decision. As of November 11, Kalshi, the regulated prediction market, prices a December hike at roughly 97%: about 86% for 25 basis points and about 11% for more. A hold is priced near 4%. For the January 2027 meeting the market is split, about 52% for another 25 bp hike against about 45% for a hold.
So in about ten weeks the open question moved from which direction to how far. A plan that assumed rates would hold, or drift lower, is not slightly off. It’s arguing with the market’s central case.
The rest of the rate complex moved with it, unevenly. The 30-year mortgage rate was 6.71% on September 3, peaked at 7.40% on October 15, and sat at 7.18% on November 5. The spread between 10-year and 2-year Treasuries narrowed from +0.38% to +0.25% in the five days to November 10 as the short end priced more tightening. None of those numbers is a forecast. Each is a fact a September assumption didn’t have.
Why a market price is the right check
Chapter 3 of Predictive Planning argues that prediction markets are a new signal layer for strategy, not because the crowd is always right, but because a market price is checkable. It carries a number, a date and a resolution. Your treasury team’s view of rates is an opinion formed once; the market’s view is re-priced every day by people with money on it. When the two disagree, that disagreement is the most useful thing in the budget review. It tells you exactly which assumption to argue about.
In July we read the market as leaning hawkish, at roughly 55% odds of a 2026 hike. That resolved. The useful lesson isn’t that the market called it. It’s that the probability was public, cheap to check, and available months before most plans were written.
Three things to do with the rate line this week
Find every place the assumption lives.It’s rarely in one cell. Search the plan for the financing cost, the hurdle rate, the customer-financing terms and any demand line sensitive to credit. List them. Most teams find the same rate written three different ways by three different departments.
Run it at two rates, not one.The market is telling you December is close to settled and January isn’t. So the honest plan carries two branches: one where rates are 25 bp higher than today by January, and one where they’re 50 bp higher. Don’t average them. A midpoint is the one outcome the market says is unlikely to show up as itself.
Stage the commitments that can’t be undone.If a capital project only clears its hurdle in the lower-rate branch, it’s not dead, it’s staged. Approve the reversible first phase and tie the rest to the January decision. That’s the Stake Sizing Matrix in one sentence: size a commitment to how hard it is to reverse, not to how confident the spreadsheet looks.
The broader point
Rates are just the clearest example this season because the market prices them so publicly. The same thing has happened to freight costs, borrowing spreads and consumer credit since September, and we track those on a live page that measures what has moved since planning season opened. The pattern is always the same. The assumption was reasonable when it was written. It just stopped being checked.
The annual plan isn’t wrong. It’s late. The fix is a standing habit of checking the plan against the signals that can break it, and November, with the board meeting a few weeks out, is the cheapest time to start. For the full read on this month’s signals, see the November Signal Layer.
Market-implied probabilities from Kalshi as of November 11, 2026; rates and spreads from FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Prices move daily. This is a read of the record, not a forecast or investment advice.