What time is the Fed statement released?

At 2:00 p.m. Eastern time on the final day of each scheduled FOMC meeting, eight times a year. The chair's press conference starts at 2:30 p.m., and the minutes follow about three weeks later. In March, June, September and December the statement comes with new economic projections and the dot plot.

Why do traders compare the new Fed statement with the previous one?

Because the committee keeps most of the text unchanged and alters only the words it wants noticed. A downgrade from solid to moderate growth, a new risk named in paragraph two or a change in the guidance sentence is the signal; unchanged sentences carry little information.

What does a dissent in a Fed vote mean?

A voting member disagreed with the decision, and the statement names them and says what they preferred. Dissents show which way the debate is leaning: on July 30, 2025, Governors Bowman and Waller dissented in favour of a cut, the first time two governors dissented since 1993, and the Fed cut seven weeks later.

Guide · Markets

How to Read a Fed Statement, Paragraph by Paragraph

A Fed statement is a short text whose meaning lies in what changed from the last one: the economic description, the guidance and the vote. Here is what each paragraph does, why markets compare it word by word, and how the July 30, 2025 statement, with one changed sentence and two governors dissenting, pointed to the cut that came seven weeks later.

Oct 26, 2026

At 2:00 p.m. Eastern time on the last day of each of its eight scheduled meetings a year, the Federal Open Market Committee publishes a statement of roughly 250 to 350 words. Half an hour later the Fed chair holds a press conference, and three weeks after that the minutes describe the debate in more detail. Four times a year, in March, June, September and December, the statement comes with the Summary of Economic Projections and its dot plot of rate forecasts. The other four meetings, including the one on October 28, 2026, have no new projections, so the statement and the press conference carry the whole message. The decision itself is usually not the news: futures normally price it days in advance. What moves markets is the language around it.

The first thing to know is that a Fed statement is written to be compared. The committee reuses most of the previous text and changes as few words as possible, so that each change is deliberate. Traders and journalists put the new statement next to the old one within seconds of release, and the Fed's own website makes the previous version easy to find. Reading a statement without that comparison is like reading one frame of a film. A sentence that has appeared unchanged for six meetings carries almost no information; a single adjective that changes carries a great deal.

Paragraph one describes the economy, and its adjectives are a code. Growth is described as solid, moderate or modest; the labour market as strong, solid or softening; inflation as elevated, somewhat elevated or having eased. A move from solid to moderate is a downgrade the committee wants noticed. Paragraph two restates the goals, maximum employment and 2% inflation over the longer run, and says how the committee sees the risks to them; when it starts naming risks on one side, it is preparing the ground for action. Paragraph three is the decision and the forward guidance, the sentence about what the committee will consider in making further adjustments, which is where a hint about the next meeting usually sits. A shorter paragraph on the balance sheet follows, and the statement ends with the vote: each member's name, and the names of any who dissented, with what they preferred instead.

Here is a real example. On July 30, 2025, the committee held the federal funds target range at 4.25% to 4.50%. Next to the June statement, almost nothing changed except the first sentence, which now said that growth of economic activity had moderated in the first half of the year. The vote paragraph changed more: nine members voted for the decision, and Governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller dissented, each preferring a quarter-point cut. It was the first time since 1993 that two Fed governors had dissented at the same meeting. Read together, the downgraded growth sentence and the two dissents said that the committee's centre was moving toward easing.

The press conference then showed why a statement is only part of the message. Asked about the next meeting, Chair Jerome Powell said the committee had made no decisions about September, and futures-implied odds of a September cut, close to 58% a week earlier, were near 39% by the following day, a move reports attributed both to his caution and to a firm inflation reading published the next morning. Seven weeks later, on September 17, 2025, the Fed did cut by a quarter point, to 4.00% to 4.25%. The statement had pointed in the right direction; the timing depended on data that arrived in between, starting with a weak August jobs report.

On October 28, 2026 the setting is reversed. The target range is 3.75% to 4.00% after September's increase, futures price only about a 5% to 7% chance of another hike at this meeting and about 80% for December, and inflation has risen with oil above $110. The questions to bring to the comparison are the same ones in the opposite direction: whether the guidance still leaves the door open to further increases or softens it, whether inflation is described more or less severely than in September, and whether anyone dissents, and for what. A hawkish dissent, or a stronger word for inflation, would tell the market that December is closer to settled than the futures price; a dovish dissent or softer guidance would say the opposite. Read the vote line first, then the changed words, and only then listen to the chair.