The Federal Reserve’s new focus on global stability could moderate future rate hikes, according to analysts at Pimco.

The Fed's “new aspect is this focus on stable markets, specifically an eye on the global marketplace, focusing on emerging markets,” said Jerome Schneider, managing director and head of the short-term and funding desk at Pimco.

This newfound attention to global markets and overall market volatility “makes a hike slightly less probable than potentially it was before [Thursday's Fed] meeting,” Schneider said Friday on a conference call hosted by the Charles Schwab Corp.

Richard Clarida, managing director at Pimco, noted Thursday in a blog post that the Fed’s statement made "two references to ‘global developments’ putting further downward pressure on inflation and that, while the risks to [the economic] outlook are balanced, the Fed is now monitoring developments abroad.”

Emerging markets, led by China, have been pounded in recent weeks over concerns about slowing growth and deflation.

Nevertheless, Schneider said a December liftoff for the Fed is still “highly probable.”

He expects the Fed to move slowly and cautiously with a rate rise. “Over the medium and longer term, there will be a lower final terminal rate than we would expect,” Schneider said.

Pimco predicts short rates will normalize at between 2.0 percent and 2.5 percent, or about zero percent in real terms, which is below historical norms.

Even after the Fed does hike short-term rates, money market funds will not necessarily increase their net yields, Schneider said, so investors will have to find other ways to generate income from cash holdings.

He mentioned Pimco’s Low Duration Active ETF (LDUR) and its Enhanced Short Maturity ETF (MINT) as examples.

In a video report posted Friday, Christine Benz, Morningstar’s director of personal finance, warned investors to stay away from short-term bond funds for investment time horizons of less than two years and advised them to use online savings banks instead, where savers can get about a one percent yield with FDIC coverage.

“One thing we've seen when we look across this category of ultra-short-term funds is this propensity to take on credit risk,” Benz said. “We've been seeing some of these funds nudging out on the credit spectrum.”

Schneider also addressed that risk. “You need to by very careful to look under the hood to make sure your managers have the ability to differentiate credits,” Schneider said.