# Fed Rate Expectations: Meeting Odds and Rate Path (`scrapemint/fed-rate-expectations`) Actor

What the market expects the Federal Reserve to do, priced from 30 Day Federal Funds futures: the odds of a hike, hold or cut at each upcoming FOMC meeting, the implied rate path by month, and how those expectations have moved. Keyless, no proxy.

- **URL**: https://apify.com/scrapemint/fed-rate-expectations.md
- **Developed by:** [Ken M](https://apify.com/scrapemint) (community)
- **Categories:** Business, News
- **Stats:** 2 total users, 1 monthly users, 100.0% runs succeeded, 0 bookmarks
- **User rating**: No ratings yet

## Pricing

$8.00 / 1,000 rate expectation rows

This Actor is paid per event. You are not charged for the Apify platform usage, but only a fixed price for specific events.

Learn more: https://docs.apify.com/actors/running/actors-in-store.md#pay-per-event

## What's an Apify Actor?

Actors are web data automations that power AI and operations. They run on the Apify platform to scrape websites, process data, connect APIs, and automate workflows.
In Batch mode, an Actor accepts a well-defined JSON input, performs an action which can take anything from a few seconds to a few hours,
and optionally produces a well-defined JSON output, datasets with results, or files in key-value store.
In Standby mode, an Actor provides a web server which can be used as a website, API, or an MCP server.
Actors are written with capital "A".

## How to integrate an Actor?

If asked about integration, you help developers integrate Actors into their projects.
You adapt to their stack and deliver integrations that are safe, well-documented, and production-ready.
The best way to integrate Actors is as follows.

- **AI agents and MCP clients** — the [Apify MCP server](https://docs.apify.com/integrations/mcp.md) at `https://mcp.apify.com` (remote, streamable HTTP, OAuth on first use).
- **Agentic workflows and local Actor development** — [Agent Skills](https://apify.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) with the [Apify CLI](https://docs.apify.com/cli/docs.md): `npm install -g apify-cli`, then `apify login`.
- **JavaScript/TypeScript projects** — the official [JS/TS client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs.md): `npm install apify-client`.
- **Python projects** — the official [Python client](https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs.md): `pip install apify-client`.
- **Any other language** — the [REST API](https://docs.apify.com/api/v2.md).

For usage examples, see the [API](#api) section below.

For more details, see Apify documentation as [Markdown index](https://docs.apify.com/llms.txt) and [Markdown full-text](https://docs.apify.com/llms-full.txt).

# README

## Fed Rate Expectations: Meeting Odds and Rate Path

What the market expects the Federal Reserve to do next, priced from 30 Day Federal Funds futures rather than from commentary. No API key, no account, no proxy.

### Three modes

**Meetings.** One row per upcoming FOMC meeting: the rate the market implies coming out of it, the move in basis points, and the odds of a hike, a hold or a cut.

**Path.** One row per contract month: the average fed funds rate the market is paying for, how far that sits from today, and how many whole moves are priced by then.

**Shift.** The same implied path against an earlier settlement report, so you can see which months repriced and by how much.

### What it looked like on 29 July 2026

```
Target range 3.50 to 3.75    effective rate 3.63    stance: easing, 3 cuts in 12 months

2026-09-16   3.630 -> 3.791   +16.1bp    +25bp 64.4%,  hold 35.6%
2026-10-28   3.791 -> 3.845    +5.4bp     hold 78.4%, +25bp 21.6%
2026-12-09   3.845 -> 3.951   +10.6bp     hold 57.6%, +25bp 42.4%
```

The Fed has cut three times in twelve months while the market prices more than one hike by the end of 2027. That gap between what the Fed has been doing and what the market expects is the reason to watch this.

### How the odds are worked out

A fed funds future settles against the **average** effective rate over its contract month, so a month holding a meeting is a blend of the old rate and the new one, not a single number. There are two ways to recover the post-meeting rate and choosing correctly is what keeps the answer stable:

- When the month straight after a decision holds no meeting, it prices one constant rate, and that rate **is** the post-meeting rate. Nothing is divided and nothing is amplified. This route is used wherever it exists.
- Otherwise the blend is solved directly. That solve divides by the days left in the month, so a decision on the 28th of a 30 day month divides by two and multiplies any input error about fifteen times. Chained across meetings it compounds: an early version of this actor produced a -1.47% policy rate and a +796bp move. Below five remaining days the solve is not trusted, and the row says so instead of publishing a number.

An implied change is then expressed in the 25 basis point steps a decision actually comes in. A 7.5bp change is not a "7.5bp hike"; no such move exists. It is roughly a 30% chance of a single 25bp hike and a 70% chance of nothing.

### Choices that change the numbers

- **Anchored on the effective rate, not the target midpoint.** The futures settle against the effective rate, which trades a few basis points below the top of the target range. On the run above the effective rate was 3.63% against a 3.625% midpoint, and anchoring on the wrong one shifts every probability in the run.
- **The Fed sets a range**, so both bounds and the midpoint ship on every row rather than the upper bound alone standing in for "the Fed rate".
- **Thinly traded contracts are excluded by default.** Front months carry hundreds of thousands of lots while a contract a year out can carry a few hundred, and a rate implied by almost no trading is not a market view worth quoting as one.
- **Two meetings in one contract month cannot be separated** by a single monthly average, and that is reported rather than guessed.

### Things worth knowing about the sources

- **Settlements publish after the close.** During the session the newest report is the previous day's, so the actor walks back to the newest date that actually has data and tells you which trade date it used.
- **The exchange keeps only about the last week of reports.** Probing from a fixed day, 24 July answered and 22 July did not. Shift mode is capped accordingly; there is no month-long history here.
- **The meeting calendar has two shapes that break a naive parser.** A meeting written as `Apr/May 30-1` is decided on 1 May, not 30 April, which puts it in a different futures contract entirely; and a `notation vote` is not a scheduled policy meeting, so it is excluded.
- **The two data hosts want opposite headers.** The exchange refuses a wildcard Accept and serves a browser; the research database stalls a browser User-Agent until it times out and answers a self-identifying one at once. Neither setting can be shared, which is worth knowing before pointing anything else at them.

### Billing

Pay per event. `rate_row` at $0.008 covers one FOMC meeting, one contract month, or one repriced month. The first 2 rows of every run are free, and notes are never charged. A meetings run returns about 8 rows for roughly $0.05 and takes a few seconds.

# Actor input Schema

## `mode` (type: `string`):

meetings = odds of a hike, hold or cut at each upcoming FOMC meeting. path = the average fed funds rate the market is paying for in each contract month. shift = how the implied path has moved since an earlier trade date.

## `tradeDate` (type: `string`):

YYYY-MM-DD. Empty uses the newest published settlement report. Settlements publish after the close, so during the session the previous day is the newest available.

## `compareDaysBack` (type: `integer`):

Shift mode. How many days back to compare against. The exchange keeps only about the last week of settlement reports, so beyond that there is nothing to compare with.

## `includeThinContracts` (type: `boolean`):

Off by default. Far dated months can carry a few hundred lots against hundreds of thousands in the front months, and a rate implied by almost no trading is not a market view worth quoting as one.

## `maxRows` (type: `integer`):

The first 2 rows of every run are free.

## Actor input object example

```json
{
  "mode": "meetings",
  "tradeDate": "",
  "compareDaysBack": 5,
  "includeThinContracts": false,
  "maxRows": 50
}
```

# API

You can run this Actor programmatically using our API. Below are code examples in JavaScript, Python, and CLI, as well as the OpenAPI specification and MCP server setup.

## JavaScript example

```javascript
import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

// Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
// Replace the '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token
const client = new ApifyClient({
    token: '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>',
});

// Prepare Actor input
const input = {};

// Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
const run = await client.actor("scrapemint/fed-rate-expectations").call(input);

// Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if any)
console.log('Results from dataset');
console.log(`💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/${run.defaultDatasetId}`);
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
items.forEach((item) => {
    console.dir(item);
});

// 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/js/docs

```

## Python example

```python
from apify_client import ApifyClient

# Initialize the ApifyClient with your Apify API token
# Replace '<YOUR_API_TOKEN>' with your token.
client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_API_TOKEN>")

# Prepare the Actor input
run_input = {}

# Run the Actor and wait for it to finish
run = client.actor("scrapemint/fed-rate-expectations").call(run_input=run_input)

# Fetch and print Actor results from the run's dataset (if there are any)
print(f"💾 Check your data here: https://console.apify.com/storage/datasets/{run.default_dataset_id}")
for item in client.dataset(run.default_dataset_id).iterate_items():
    print(item)

# 📚 Want to learn more 📖? Go to → https://docs.apify.com/api/client/python/docs/quick-start

```

## CLI example

```bash
echo '{}' |
apify call scrapemint/fed-rate-expectations --silent --output-dataset

```

## MCP server setup

```json
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apify": {
            "type": "http",
            "url": "https://mcp.apify.com/?tools=fetch-actor-details,scrapemint/fed-rate-expectations"
        }
    }
}

```

The hosted server signs you in with OAuth on first connect, so no API token belongs in this config. Clients without OAuth support can send an `Authorization: Bearer <APIFY_API_TOKEN>` header instead, using a token from API & Integrations in Apify Console (https://console.apify.com/settings/integrations).

## OpenAPI specification

Download the OpenAPI definition: https://api.apify.com/v2/actors/BjvLLTdTXdf1XYWkD/builds/iEEieftNSJS4QRZRD/openapi.json