This is one of the stranger things we've seen recently.
The research team at the San Francisco Fed earlier this week published a letter analyzing one startup's analysis of Fed communications.
Economist Fernanda Nechio and researcher Rebecca Regan looked at data from Prattle, a textual analysis specialist, as part of an examination of the Fed's communication strategy following the financial crisis.
The short of it is that Prattle was accurately able to predict what the Fed's infamous "dot plot" would look like upon its next release.
Since 2012, the Fed has released a Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) — which contains economic projections from meeting participants — after every other Federal Open Market Committee meeting. The SEP also includes the dot plot, which is an aggregated forecast of where Fed officials see interest rates at various points in the future.
Prattle's findings show that Fed communications ahead of SEP releases can indicate where the Fed's median expectation for i
