What Is the Fed Dot Plot? The Summary of Economic Projections, Explained

The Fed dot plot is a chart inside the quarterly Summary of Economic Projections where each policymaker marks where they think the policy rate should sit.

The dots show where individual Fed officials think rates should go, not what the committee has promised to do. They are a snapshot of opinion, not a schedule.

What the dot plot actually is

Four times a year, roughly in March, June, September, and December, the Federal Reserve publishes a document called the Summary of Economic Projections, or SEP. It accompanies the rate decision and the Chair's press conference at those meetings, and it is not released at every meeting. Buried inside the SEP is one chart that markets fixate on: the dot plot.

The dot plot collects every FOMC participant's view of where the federal funds rate should be at the end of each of the next few calendar years and over the longer run. Each dot is one person placing one projection for one year. When the committee is fully staffed there are about 19 participants: all of the Fed governors plus all 12 regional Reserve Bank presidents.

A precision that trips people up: these projections come from participants, not voters. In any given year only a subset of the regional presidents actually votes on the rate decision, but every participant submits dots. So the chart is wider than the voting committee, and it is wrong to describe it as the voting members' plan.

Two more facts define what the dot plot is and is not. First, the dots are anonymous. You cannot tell which dot belongs to the Chair or to any named official, only the distribution of opinion. Second, each dot represents that person's view of appropriate policy under their own economic forecast. It is a conditional projection, not a vote, a pledge, or a commitment. The Fed stresses that these change from meeting to meeting as the data evolves.

How to read the chart

The horizontal axis is calendar years: the current year, then the next two, then a final column labeled longer run. The vertical axis is the level of the federal funds rate, usually marked in eighths of a point.

Read it column by column. Each column is the spread of opinion for one year. A tight cluster of dots means consensus. A wide vertical spread means officials disagree.

The median dot

The single number everyone quotes is the median dot: the middle participant in a column, the value at which half the dots sit higher and half sit lower. Markets watch the median because it is the most robust summary of the group. You will rarely see the average or the mode cited, and for good reason. Always say median, not average.

The longer-run dot

The longer-run column is special. It is each participant's estimate of the neutral rate, often written as r-star, the rate that neither stimulates nor restrains the economy once unemployment is at its sustainable level and inflation is at the Fed's 2 percent target. It is a structural anchor, not a near-term forecast. When the current-year dots sit above the longer-run dot, policy is projected to stay restrictive, meaning above neutral.

Reading the shape over time

The path of medians from this year down toward the longer-run dot implies the expected pace of future moves. Roughly speaking, each 0.25 point of difference is one quarter-point move. If the medians shift up versus the prior SEP, that is a hawkish revision: higher for longer, fewer cuts. If they shift down, that is dovish: more or faster cuts. The market reaction is driven mostly by the surprise relative to what was already priced in, not by the level of the dots themselves.

What the latest dot plot showed

The most recent SEP landed on 2026-06-17 and was the first dot plot under Chair Warsh. The rate decision itself was a non-event: the Fed held the policy rate at 3.75 percent, exactly as expected. Going in, the Polymarket contract on no change at the June meeting was priced at 98.45 percent. With the decision a foregone conclusion, the real news was in the projections.

And the projections moved up. This was a hawkish revision versus the prior round:

• The median for the end of the current year, 2026, moved to 3.8 percent from 3.4 percent. That is a shift of 0.4 point, so the median participant now sees less easing this year, between one and two fewer quarter-point cuts than previously projected.
• The first-year-ahead median for 2027 moved to 3.6 percent from 3.1 percent, a shift of 0.5 point.
• The second-year-ahead median for 2028 moved to 3.4 percent from 3.1 percent.
• The longer-run, or neutral, median held at 3.1 percent, unchanged.

That last line is the one worth teaching. The near-term path moved up while the committee's estimate of where rates eventually settle did not budge. The revision is about the timing and pace of cuts, not about a higher long-run destination.

In plain language: at 3.75 percent the policy rate is still above the 3.1 percent longer-run dot, so policy is projected to remain modestly restrictive. The upward shift in the near-term dots means the median official now expects to cut more slowly than they did before, even though they still see the rate eventually settling around 3.1 percent.

How Kresmion measures this

The dots are what officials think should happen. They are a different object from what traders think will happen, and the two often diverge. Kresmion tracks both. The dot-plot medians above come from the macro calendar, where each Interest Rate Projection series carries the new value against the previous one. Sitting next to them is market-implied pricing: the Polymarket June-hold contract at 98.45 percent, which is a betting probability, not a Fed figure. The gap between official projections and market prices is exactly where the interesting questions live.

You can see the day-of context, including the decision and the projection releases, in the research notes, which carried the decision on 2026-06-17 and the follow-up on retail sales and the hold on 2026-06-18. Our full sourcing approach is described in the methodology.

Key takeaways

Frequently asked questions

Is the dot plot a promise that the Fed will cut or hike?

No. Each dot is one participant's view of appropriate policy under their own forecast, not a vote or a commitment. The dots are routinely revised and have often turned out to be wrong, so they should be read as a snapshot of current thinking rather than a schedule. Past projections need not repeat.

Why does everyone watch the median dot instead of the average?

The median is the middle participant's projection, the level at which half the dots are higher and half are lower. It is more robust to a few extreme outliers than an average would be, which is why it is the number markets quote. For the latest plot the current-year median is 3.8 percent.

How is the dot plot different from market pricing like Polymarket?

The dots show what Fed officials think rates should be. Instruments like Polymarket and fed funds futures show what traders are betting will actually happen. They frequently diverge. In June 2026 the market priced the hold at 98.45 percent, while the news was in the projections, where the near-term dots moved up even as the longer-run dot held at 3.1 percent.