Issue No. 4 · Wednesday, July 8, 2026 · thecfodesk.com
THE SETUP
The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.50%–3.75% for the fourth consecutive meeting in June — and under new Chair Kevin Warsh, the signal is unmistakable: higher for longer is not a forecast anymore, it’s the operating environment. PCE inflation was revised up sharply to 3.6% for 2026. The next meeting is July 28–29. No cut is coming.
THE SIGNAL
What the Fed just told every CFO — and most aren’t listening
Jerome Powell is gone. Kevin Warsh took the chair in May, and the market spent six weeks misreading him as a dove. He isn’t. Speaking at the central bankers’ forum in Sintra, Warsh made clear that price stability is the Fed’s primary objective, that political pressure won’t influence policy, and that traditional forward guidance is over. Read that last point carefully: the Fed is no longer telegraphing its next move. CFOs who have been waiting for a signal to refinance, raise capital, or restructure debt are waiting for something that isn’t coming.
The Fed’s June projections revised PCE inflation to 3.6% for 2026 — up from 2.7% in March. GDP growth was revised down slightly to 2.2%. That combination — sticky inflation, moderating growth — is the environment where cost of capital mistakes become expensive and permanent.
Three things every CFO should be doing before Q3 closes:
First, re-run your interest rate sensitivity model with the fed funds rate flat through year-end — not the two cuts the market was pricing in January.
Second, stress-test any floating-rate debt against a scenario where rates don’t move until mid-2027.
Third, if you have a capital raise planned for H2, move the timeline up. The window between now and the July 28–29 meeting is as good as it gets this year.
The CFO who acts on this environment will look prescient in twelve months. The one waiting for a cut will explain to the board why they missed the window.
QUICK HITS
Four things every CFO needs to know this week.
CFO confidence falls sharply in Q2. Deloitte’s latest CFO Signals survey reported an overall confidence score of 5.4 out of 10 in Q2 — down from 6.3 in Q1 and the second-largest quarterly drop in four years. Risk appetite fell with it: only about a third of CFOs now say it’s a good time to take greater risks, down from 60% in Q1. The number to watch: 53% cite the economy as their top external risk heading into H2.
The SEC just proposed letting public companies report twice a year. On May 5, the SEC formally proposed a rule allowing public companies to file semiannual reports on a new Form 10-S in place of three quarterly 10-Qs — the first change to the quarterly reporting cadence since 1970. The proposal is optional, not mandatory. The comment period closed July 6. Our take: the 10-Q is the scoreboard, not the game. Removing it doesn’t change how companies are managed — it just gives investors less information to work with.
KPMG just put AI inside the room where the work actually happens. In May, KPMG announced a global alliance with Anthropic to embed AI directly into Digital Gateway — the platform its 276,000 professionals use daily for tax and advisory client work. Three of four Big Four firms now run their AI strategy on Anthropic; only EY went Microsoft. For CFOs working with Big Four advisors, the AI your auditors and tax advisors use is changing faster than your own internal stack. That asymmetry is worth tracking.
Deloitte’s Q2 survey: CFOs are raising cost and price forecasts while cutting growth expectations. Finance leaders responding to Deloitte’s latest quarterly survey in late June raised their cost and price outlooks while lowering expectations for economic growth — a combination that compresses margins without triggering the kind of revenue recovery that would justify it. The CFOs most vulnerable in this environment: those still running H1 assumptions in their H2 models.
THE PLAYBOOK
The Q3 cost of capital reset — a five-line model
WACC — recalculate with the current 10-year Treasury yield as your risk-free rate. If you haven’t updated this since January, your WACC is wrong.
Floating rate exposure — total floating-rate debt × current spread. What does a 12-month hold at current rates cost versus your budget assumption?
Refinancing window — any debt maturing in the next 18 months needs a decision now, not in Q4.
Hurdle rate — if your WACC went up, your project hurdle rate should too. Which approved capex projects no longer clear the bar?
Hedging position — do you have rate caps or swaps in place? If not, is the premium now worth it given the Warsh signal?
This isn’t a complex model. It’s five numbers on a page. The CFOs who have them will make better decisions in the next 90 days than the ones who don’t.
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THE CLOSE
One question: Has your board updated its view on cost of capital for H2 — or are they still working from January assumptions? Reply and let us know what you’re hearing in the room.
— The CFO Desk
[email protected] · thecfodesk.com
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