Is the dot plot a forecast of Fed policy?

It is a collection of individual participants' views of appropriate policy under their own economic projections. It is not a Committee decision, and past dot plots have often been revised substantially as conditions changed.

At which meetings is the dot plot published?

With the Summary of Economic Projections at four meetings a year: March, June, September and December, released with the 2:00 p.m. Eastern statement.

FOMC dot plot and Summary of Economic Projections (SEP)

At four FOMC meetings a year, in March, June, September and December, the Federal Reserve publishes the Summary of Economic Projections with the 2:00 p.m. Eastern statement. It includes each participant's projections for growth, unemployment and inflation and the dot plot of their appropriate policy rate path, which futures compare with the path already priced in fed funds and SOFR futures.

Senzoukria · Economic events · Updated September 2026

At a glance

Published by: Federal Reserve, with the FOMC statement
Meetings: March, June, September and December
Usual time: 2:00 p.m. ET (1:00 p.m. Chicago), with the statement
Projections: Real GDP growth, unemployment rate, PCE and core PCE inflation, federal funds rate
Participants: All Board members and Reserve Bank presidents, voters or not

What the SEP and the dots show

Each participant submits projections for the current year, the next few years and the longer run, assuming what they see as appropriate policy. The SEP tables report the median, the central tendency and the range for each variable. The dot plot shows, anonymously, each participant's view of the appropriate federal funds rate at the end of each year and in the longer run.

The dots are individual views, not a Committee decision or a commitment. They change as the data change, and a dot plot published in one quarter has often been revised substantially by the next.

How the market reads the dots

Parts of the dot plot and what traders compare them with
Element	What it shows	Compared with
Median dot for the current year	The central view of the year-end rate	The path priced in fed funds and SOFR futures
Median dot for later years	The expected pace of easing or tightening	The shape of the SOFR futures strip
Longer-run dot	Participants' estimate of the neutral rate	Long-term yields and ZB, ZN pricing
Dispersion of dots	How much participants disagree	Uncertainty about the path
Inflation and unemployment projections	The economic story behind the dots	Recent data and consensus forecasts

Why futures react

Rates futures price an expected path of policy. When the median dots imply a path above or below that pricing, Treasury and SOFR futures can reprice, and the reaction spreads to the dollar, dollar-quoted FX futures, gold and index futures. A small shift in one median dot can matter if it changes the number of moves implied for a year. The dots are, however, read together with the statement and the press conference; the Chair's framing of them can amplify or dampen the first reaction.

Order flow on an SEP day

Everything arrives at 2:00 p.m. ET: decision, statement, projections and dots. The first reaction is compressed into the same seconds, and readers of the dots are typically a little slower than readers of the rate decision. On the footprint this can look like a first burst on the decision, then a second wave within the next minutes once the projections are digested.

Rates futures often react more to the dots than index futures do, at least at first. Watching ZN or SOFR futures alongside ES helps separate a rates repricing from a change in equity sentiment. The press conference at 2:30 p.m. then frequently revisits the dots, which can extend or reverse the first move.

In Senzoukria

News calendar: the projections may be listed as their own row at the same time as the statement; the event detail shows 1:00 p.m. Chicago time.
The week-ahead strip counts the high-impact events of each day, so an SEP meeting week is visible as a load of Fed events midweek.
Chart panes: ZN and ES in two panes of the chart workspace, each with the Macro events overlay, show the two reactions side by side on one timeline.
Session brief: the AI summary in the News terminal can recap the calendar and headlines around the meeting with the engine you configured; it states what happened, not what will happen.

In the same section

Sources

Federal Reserve: FOMC meeting calendars and information (2026-09-25)

This page in other languages

Frequently asked questions

Is the dot plot a forecast of Fed policy?: It is a collection of individual participants' views of appropriate policy under their own economic projections. It is not a Committee decision, and past dot plots have often been revised substantially as conditions changed.
At which meetings is the dot plot published?: With the Summary of Economic Projections at four meetings a year: March, June, September and December, released with the 2:00 p.m. Eastern statement.

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