Rate Rise Calls Evaporate, Murmurs Of Fed Reversal

In July 2011, after a year of hikes by Sweden's Riksbank that took rates from 0.25 to 2 percent, three-month overnight index swap rates, a measure of rate expectations, rose as high as 2.25 percent, implying a further tightening. The central bank in fact began cutting in late 2011, after which rate expectations declined for four years.

The Reserve Bank of Australia began raising in late 2009 from 3.00 percent, finishing at 4.75 percent a year later.

Aussie rate futures gave the first glimpse of a shift towards pricing in a cut in August 2011, rising 25 basis points to 95.50. But they quickly fell back and only rose in earnest at the end of October when the RBA started cutting.

A rise in the price of interest rate futures contracts implies an expected fall in actual interest rates.

The ECB, meanwhile, hiked from 1 percent in early 2011 to 1.5 percent later that year, only to start cutting a few months later as the euro zone's debt crisis escalated.

Euribor rate futures rose 0.4 percent in price between July and September, suggesting a shift in traders' bets, but quickly retreated and only moved decisively in mid-October once the ECB started cutting.

Analysts say it is extremely difficult for rates futures curves to show anything more nuanced than a broad direction.

"You can have one bump in the curve, the turning point of the cycle, but you can't have two. To get even one bump in the dollar curve you'd need to get more altitude at the short end," said Societe Generale rates strategist Ciaran O'Hagan.

Markets tracking the Fed are more liquid than those tracking the Riksbank and RBA. And the Fed, aware of its responsibility as the world's largest and most important central bank, has been in no-surprises mode for some time.

Futures contracts show bets that the next move in U.S. rates will be up are currently the heaviest since the end of 2014 but sustained volatility across world markets could yet force the Fed's hand.

In September, it backed away from a widely expected rate rise -- sparking steep falls on Wall Street and other markets -- citing China's mini currency devaluation a month before.