Perhaps the one most important, if completely meaningless chart (because it will as usual revised countless times in the next year and the final outcome will be anything but what the Fed is predicting) that everyone was looking for in today's FOMC forecast materials, is the so-called "dots" - the Fed's estimates of where the Fed Fund's rate will be at the end of 2016.
The big picture: while there is increasing clustering in the 2-2.5% region, the lower and higher forecasts actually went down, while the upper range of the Fed Funds rate forecast chart for 2016 was reduced from 6% to 5%.
In other words, when forecasting inflation, growth and the Fed Funds rate, the Fed will need a smaller chart.
And yet, while everything will surely change, one thing is certain: the one "dot" sliding ever lower has a name: Kocherladota.
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Of note: while the chaos in the 2016 dots was clear, the 2015 "dots" actually rose from a median estimate of 1.125% in June to 1.375% in September.
And while the dots chart was a snoozer this time around, it was the "Number of participants that saw a rate hike in 2015" that got the most attention today, rising from 12 in June to 14 as of the most recent meeting, with only 2 now expecting a rate hike in 2016.
June:
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and September:
[4]
