Yahoo Finance's Brian Cheung joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel to discuss today's Yahoo U: what is the dot plot.

It Is probably the most closely scrutinised scatter chart in world financial markets. Every three months since January 2012, the Federal Reserve has sent analysts scurrying by updating its “dot plot”, ...

Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung joins the Yahoo Finance Live panel for today’s Yahoo U: Fed dot plot.

Since 2011, the Fed has published a chart known as the “dot plot,” which map out policymakers’ expectations for where interest rates could be headed in the future.

The dot plot shows the highest projection for 2025 of 5.625% and the lowest projection of 2.625%. The message from the dot plot is that interest rates are going to stay higher for longer.

The Fed's dot plot is a chart that records each Fed official's projection for the central bank's key short-term interest rate. The dot plot is updated every three months and is meant to provide ...

Each dot on the chart represents one Fed official. However, the dot plot is anonymous, so investors can’t tie individual projections to individual Fed officials.

Red is the September Dot Plot and blue is December. If we're looking at the survey results as a whole, the Fed is essentially telling us that it's forecasting three rate hikes in 2017.

Dot Plot and Gold What is the link between the dot plot used by the Fed and gold? The dot plot – or, actually, the changes in the dot plot – show the shifts in the US central bank’s stance.

TheStreet’s Martin Baccardax explains what the Fed’s dot plot is and why it’s such an important tool.

That's best viewed through this chart, from the CME's handy Fed watch tool, on market expectations for interest rates and the last dot plot of Fed policymakers. The new one will be released at 2 p.m.