Dot Plot

Four times a year, each Federal Reserve official privately submits where they think interest rates will land over the next few years. The Fed then publishes all those guesses as anonymous dots on a chart, no names attached. It's not a promise. Officials change their minds constantly, and the dots have been wrong plenty of times. But markets treat it as the closest thing to a weather forecast for interest rates, and a dot plot that shifts even slightly from the last one can move stocks and bonds within minutes of being released.