U.S. Federal Reserve likely will pull the trigger and hike interest rates in December after taking a pass last week, according to economists polled by Reuters who assigned a 60 percent probability of it happening.

    For months one of the most debated topics in global financial markets, the timing of the first rate hike in nearly a decade in the world’s largest economy has proven a tough call for forecasters and traders.

    The outlook isn’t any clearer now, after Fed Chair Janet Yellen held policy steady last week and added China and global financial markets as reasons for not moving, despite data from home suggesting it may be time.

    Still, 72 of 93 forecasters polled between Friday and Tuesday picked December as the most likely month.

    “The window for a rate hike this year has narrowed. While December remains in play, a rate hike this year is not a foregone conclusion,” Ellen Zentner, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note.

    The Fed stood pat on opportunities to tighten policy in June and September.

    Although forecasters now seem more sure about December, they were similarly convinced about their predictions for a hike in June. But an unexpected contraction in first quarter economic growth muted those calls.

    What has perhaps further muddied the waters now is that the Fed’s tone and growth outlook at last week’s meeting suggested a more dovish stance than earlier, even with the jobless rate close to a point that many associate with full employment and the economy expanding 3.7 percent in the second quarter.

    “This has sparked a ‘the Fed knows something we don’t’ trade in the markets,” said Neil Dutta at Renaissance Macro in New York.

    The decision to hold rates in a range of zero to 0.25 percent, an almost unanimous consensus among Fed policymakers who voted, has effectively thrown open the doors to the first move higher at every meeting from here on.

    Yet, only nine economists in the latest survey expect the Fed to act in October, with the wider consensus from another question attaching just a 20 percent probability to this.

    Of the remaining 12 in the survey of 93 respondents, who chose various periods in 2016, eight picked the first quarter.

    Fresh projections from last week’s meeting showed most policymakers also still foresee raising rates at least once this year.(SD-Agencies)