The context
Coverage connects policy decisions and expectations, inflation, employment, balance-sheet liquidity, credit and growth. It links FOMC statements, minutes and projections with H.4.1, New York Fed operations, lending surveys and macroeconomic releases. Those are related evidence streams, not interchangeable versions of one signal.
It is useful to distinguish a change in an underlying data period from a change in information available between editions. A payroll revision is new information about the past; a monthly inflation release is not a weekly inflation rate. Research newsletters and broad data portals are discovery tools, while a dated official release supports the actual claim.
What we track
Definitions and interpretation below describe our coverage. They are not live readings or mechanical buy/sell instructions.
FOMC decision and effective date
The federal-funds target range, vote and implementation instructions at each decision.
How to read it: A range bound, midpoint and effective federal-funds rate are different quantities. Report basis-point changes with the instrument named and preserve announcement versus effective dates.
Source & methodology ↗Projections and communication
FOMC statements, minutes, press conferences and participants’ economic and policy projections.
How to read it: Individual projections are conditional judgments rather than a committee commitment. Compare revisions across vintages and separate official language from the publication’s interpretation.
Source & methodology ↗Observed overnight rates
Effective federal funds, SOFR and administered rates on compatible business dates.
How to read it: Implementation can remain orderly during a policy hold or change. A repo rate moves with collateral and balance-sheet conditions, not only with the target range.
Source & methodology ↗Balance-sheet composition
Securities, lending facilities, bank reserves and other assets or liabilities in H.4.1.
How to read it: A larger total balance sheet is not automatically bond buying. Identify the line item, weekly-average versus Wednesday basis and valuation effects before describing liquidity.
Source & methodology ↗Funding flows and buffers
Treasury cash, reverse-repo balances, reserve supply and standing-facility usage.
How to read it: Settlement can redistribute cash among instruments. Simple assets-minus-Treasury-cash-minus-reverse-repo charts are analytical constructions, not an official measure of cash destined for equities.
Source & methodology ↗Transmission to credit and demand
Lending standards, loan demand, inflation and real activity reported by their primary statistical agencies.
How to read it: Policy works through borrowing costs and expectations with uncertain lags. A contemporaneous market move does not identify the causal effect of one decision.
Source & methodology ↗How we cover it
The policy dashboard should name each rate and unit, show actual observation dates, preserve revisions and mark new, carried, stale or unavailable evidence. Changes in rates use percentage points or basis points.
Analysis includes Treasury and mortgage markets, banks, households and business financing. Upcoming meetings come from official calendars. Market-implied probabilities require a named methodology and observation time.
What the numbers can miss
Missing or inaccessible evidence is not a hold decision or a zero change. Today’s historical download cannot prove what was known at an earlier cutoff.
Inflation, growth and policy forecasts can all change. Do not turn a dot plot, a futures price or an editorial scenario into a guaranteed rate decision.
Sources & editorial context
Derived from the original Fed chat and corrected tracker definitions. It is a guide to reading policy, not a current policy recommendation.
- Federal Reserve — Monetary policy
- Federal Reserve — H.4.1 balance sheet
- New York Fed — Markets and policy implementation
- Federal Reserve — Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey
- BEA — Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index
- BLS — Current Employment Statistics
Coverage framework informed by the publisher’s U.S. Federal Reserve reference discussion. Discussions guide the reporting agenda; factual claims and metrics are checked against the identified source institutions.