The market is expecting a rate hike in December, but it may not take one well if the economy doesn't experience significant growth, Fidelity Investment macro expert Jurrien Timmer said Wednesday.
"The market, I think, keeps telling the Fed, 'Wait 'til we have growth, and then you can raise all you want,' because then the market can handle it. But at zero or negative growth, it can't," Timmer told told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Timmer said that so far, third-quarter earnings have resembled a "very typical, consistent seasonal pattern" of companies under-promising, then over-delivering on their earnings.
But, after five quarters of negative growth with sequential improvement, Timmer said U.S. markets may see their first positive quarter.
"The transmission mechanism for the last problems when the Fed raised rates last December … was that the Chinese yuan was overvalued, then that went down, you had the whole capital flight thing and tightening of financial conditions," Timmer said.
"This time, the yuan has already devalued, so that's sort of out of the way, so I think the market can actually handle it," he said of a Fed rate hike.
IHT Wealth Management's Steven Dudash agreed, saying "it's time for the Fed to get moving."
Dudash told "Squawk Box" that artificially low rates have been in place for too long.
"Our economy's ready for it, our employment numbers are in the right spot, our underemployment's coming up, too," he said. "In a bubble, we're ready, but because of Japan and because of what's going on in Europe, I think [the Fed has] been held back a little bit."
Strategas Research Partners' Jason Trennert said Japan's negative interest rates was a red flag for the Fed and a telltale sign of the market's limits.
"I'm of the view that monetary policy can't create growth, it can just create the conditions upon which you can have growth," he told "Squawk Box."
And, in the case of Japan and Europe, which also has instituted negative interest rates, Trennert said it may not always be in the best interests of the average citizen to grant central banks that power.
"I think you could make the case, especially with negative interest rates now, that monetary policy has gone from being ineffectual to being harmful," he said. "If you have people that are taking money out of banks and putting it in safes — that's happening in Germany, it's happening in Japan — that's manifestly deflationary."