The dot plots are not FOMC commitments or an aggregate view of the FOMC.

The dot plot is useful because it can convey the shifting consensus of the committee. For example, the March 2025 revision depicted the majority of policymakers supporting two reductions in 2025 ...

The current dot plot doesn’t provide the information to differentiate between those two paths, which have different implications for markets and investors.

The Fed should stop publishing its projections of future interest rates, which prove only that the economy is unpredictable—and undermine the central bank’s credibility.

Despite numerous lectures by Chairman Yellen about the proper interpretation of the dot plots, most talking heads still don’t get it. They insist on treating them as a promise of things to come ...

Investors focus on the median dot. As many as 19 monetary policymakers — the seven governors on the Fed Board in Washington and the presidents of the 12 regional banks — can contribute a dot.

The Fed dot plot is a quarterly chart with FOMC participants’ predictions about what the federal funds rate will be over the next two to three years and in the longer term. The dot plot provides ...

The dot plot, decoded When the central bank releases its Summary of Economic Projections each quarter, Fed watchers focus obsessively on one part in particular: the so-called dot plot.

Why the dot plot was created Fed officials started using the dot plot in 2012 at a time when the economy was still recovering from the Great Recession and when interest rates were still near zero.