With all the “will they or won’t they” for this week’s decision on interest rates, it has grown rather tiring listening to the endless number of talking heads going on about the coming interest rate hikes. That rate hike cycle is coming, but it remains to be seen if it will start this Thursday when Janet Yellen announces the Federal Reserve’s decision.

The Business Roundtable has released its outlook for the third quarter of 2015. What may matter the most here, and what the markets are keying off of, is that chief executive officers do not seem worried about the decision on any interest rate hikes, and those CEOs are not taking their expectations on gross domestic product (GDP) much lower from the prior quarter’s estimate.

If investors just looked at the raw headline index reading here, they may have missed the full impact of the report. While CEOs are cautious on near-term prospects and are trimming capital spending plans, the CEO Economic Outlook Index fell by 7.2 points down to 74.1 in the third quarter. Readings at 50 or above indicate economic expansion, while readings under 50 are indicative of economic contraction.

Investors should keep in mind that this third-quarter 2015 survey was completed between August 5 and 26, and that responses were received from 141 member CEOs. That means that the responses were taking place during the onslaught and then the height of the panic out of China.

Here was the big kicker for the report: CEOs now expect 2015 GDP to be up 2.4% rather than the prior quarter’s 2.5% projection. CEO expectations for sales fell by 11.1 points and hiring was down 7.9 points. Expectations for capital spending were down just 2.4 points. Again, all are negative, but that GDP expectation seems more than survivable in a grander scale than much of the panic in prior weeks may have led you to believe.

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Randall Stephenson is chairman of Business Roundtable. He is also chairman and CEO of AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T). Stephenson noted that business plans could be negatively affected if Washington fails to act on federal budgets, the debt ceiling and tax extenders. He said:

The downward trend in CEO plans for investment and hiring continues to reflect reasonable caution regarding near-term prospects for modest U.S. growth. … Predictability is critical to spur investment and unlock economic expansion and job growth. Congress and the Administration need to work together to pass a prudent spending plan and renew expired tax provisions. U.S. workers cannot afford the instability that comes with inaction.

While this was not part of the official statement, Stephenson said on a conference call that a one-quarter point rate hike will not have any real effect on CEOs deciding to invest and hire over the next year. Leaders are more worried about dysfunctional issues here and abroad, like government funding, growth in China and slowing international trade.

The investment community needs to pay attention here. This may be one of the driving forces for the stock market rally on Tuesday. If you were just watching the mini-meltdown that took place over the past month, you almost certainly would have guessed that business leaders were assuming far worse than just a 0.1% lower estimate for this year’s GDP, versus the prior quarterly outlook. Again, consider the August 5 to August 26 time frame. That was during the height of the market panic (see market chart below from Yahoo! Finance).

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While the pool of CEOs is rather small, think about what the Business Roundtable says about itself:

Business Roundtable CEO members lead companies with $7.2 trillion in annual revenues and nearly 16 million employees. Business Roundtable member companies comprise more than a quarter of the total market capitalization of U.S. stock markets and invest $190 billion annually in research and development — equal to 70 percent of U.S. private R&D spending. Our companies pay more than $230 billion in dividends to shareholders and generate more than $470 billion in sales for small and medium-sized businesses annually. Business Roundtable companies also make more than $3 billion a year in charitable contributions.

The Business Roundtable call rarely moves markets, but this time may be different. It sure seems more than coincidental that the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 took off at about 10:15 a.m. Eastern Time after this data had been reviewed by the market participants. On last look, the Dow was up 144 points (0.8%) and the S&P 500 was up 16 points (0.9%). A customized chart of the DJIA from Yahoo! Finance is shown below, revealing what happened from August 5 to August 26.

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