Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman breaks down how to make sense of the Federal Reserve's 'Dot Plot' or Summary of Economic Projections.

The dot plot was invented in late 2011, at a time when Fed officials were considering how to prepare markets for the shift they hoped to make away from the unprecedented array of monetary support ...

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.

The Federal Reserve introduced a visual tool called the "dot plot" in 2012 to communicate where officials think interest rates should be in the coming years. The dot plot is eagerly dissected by ...

Each dot represents the interest rate prediction of one Fed official. For example, each dot in the "2020" column on the dot plot (see below) indicates one official's prediction for where the benchmark ...

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 ...