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All eyes from Wall Street to Washington today were peeled for one visual: the US Federal Reserve’s so-called ‘dot plot’.

It’s a visual representation of each member of the Fed committee’s expectations of interest rates over the next three years.

Aside from today’s marquis announcement of the first rate reduction of the year, which was already priced in, it’s the dot plot that offers the real juice.

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Fidelity’s primer covers the origin and importance of the visual:

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So, what magic information is densely packed into a seemingly boring scatterplot?

1. Overall trend — where do the rates seem to be heading, and how quickly?
2. Granularity — where is there consensus vs. dispersion amongst the committee?
3. Midpoints — the best prediction for a future rate, given available information as of today.

To say this information is market-moving would be an understatement.

A lower cost of capital has implications across the entire economy, so any insight gleaned on future rates can be traded on.

Hence why this simple quarterly visual is so rich and sought after.

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Now, The Fed could just as well release a drafted document, in narrative form to share the anonymized output of the committee survey…

But in this case, as in many others, a visual speaks louder and more deeply than words.

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Do you have a simple, visual asset that can awaken the senses of your ideal buyer at a glance?

Yours may not move global markets, but it can certainly open the right eyes to your unique perspective.

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💡

-Wes