In the past two weeks, Rick Rieder’s odds on Polymarket of becoming the next Fed chair have surged from low single digits to nearly 50%, putting the veteran Wall Streeter far in the lead over second and third place candidates Kevin Warsh (29%) and Christopher Waller (6%). Rieder would bring a highly unusual background to the job. The current chief Jerome Powell is a former lawyer, private equity partner, and Treasury official, while his predecessors Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan were PhD economists (the former a Princeton professor, the latter a consultant and policy advisor). By contrast, Rieder has spent his career as a hands-on, daily participant in the global bond markets, as a trader and asset manager, expert at parsing and profiting from the central bank’s cues.
In simple terms, no one knows more about the bond market than Rick Rieder. And nothing’s a bigger deal in Trump’s policy decisions than what makes the bond market thrive or tank—witness his reversal of the tariff threat versus Europe over Greenland after investors dumped Treasuries and rates spiked.
