Fed Chair testimony to Congress: the semiannual Monetary Policy Report

What happens at the hearings

The Monetary Policy Report reviews the economy, financial conditions and policy decisions since the previous report. The Chair then delivers a prepared statement and answers questions from members of each committee. The two hearings usually cover similar ground, but the second one can bring new questions after markets have digested the first.

Unlike the press conference after an FOMC meeting, the hearings are not tied to a policy decision. Their weight comes from timing: they often fall between meetings, when the market is looking for any sign of how the Committee reads recent data.

What moves markets during a testimony

• The prepared statement: its description of inflation, the labor market and the policy outlook is parsed as soon as it is available.
• Answers on the timing of the next moves, which can confirm or contradict what fed funds and SOFR futures price.
• Comments on the balance sheet, bank regulation or financial stability.
• Political questions usually matter less to futures, unless they touch on the Fed's independence or fiscal policy with market consequences.
• Differences between the first and second day's answers, which can reopen a question the market thought settled.

Order flow over a multi-hour event

A testimony has no trigger second except the release of the prepared text. Around that moment the book may thin as on a data release. After it, liquidity usually returns closer to normal during the questions, with bursts of aggressive trading when an answer touches the rate path. On the footprint, those bursts appear as isolated bars with much higher volume and one-sided delta in an otherwise ordinary session.

Because the hearing overlaps regular trading hours, the session volume profile absorbs the whole event. Reading acceptance is more useful than reading any single spike: does price build volume at the levels reached after a key answer, or return to the value area that existed before the hearing? Cumulative delta over the hearing window shows whether aggression stayed one-sided or alternated.

In Senzoukria

Testimony rows can appear in the News calendar; when the row name contains testimony or the Chair's name, the calendar describes it as policy commentary or a central bank chair speech. The event detail repeats the time in Chicago.

The news wire's FED tag and the ZN / ZB preset filter headlines about the Federal Reserve; the wire is delayed by about 15 minutes, which makes it a record of what was said rather than a live feed. Session Volume Pace compares the cumulative volume of the session with the same point of previous sessions, which shows whether the testimony is drawing unusual participation.