The Federal Reserve, or Fed, is the US central bank. Its officials stopped talking about interest rates in public on Saturday, October 17. According to the St. Louis Fed's published calendar, their silence lasts through Thursday, October 29. The Fed's rate meeting falls in between, on October 27 and 28.
The silence arrives with two numbers in focus. Headline inflation, the rise in overall consumer prices, was 3.7% in September. The 10-year Treasury yield ended the trading day on October 16 at 5.098%. That yield is the interest rate the US government pays to borrow for 10 years. From October 19 to 23, traders face a full week with no Fed official explaining the central bank's view of those numbers.
The rule in one sentence
The Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, is the group of Fed officials that votes on the benchmark interest rate. The Fed uses that rate to steer borrowing costs across the economy. FOMC members follow a "blackout period" around each scheduled meeting. The St. Louis Fed spells out the dates. The blackout begins "the second Saturday preceding an FOMC meeting" and ends "the Thursday following a meeting, unless otherwise noted."
For October 2026, the St. Louis Fed lists the window as Saturday, October 17 to Thursday, October 29.
The Fed sets the limit in its written policy on outside communications. Monetary policy means the Fed's decisions on interest rates and the supply of money in the economy. Under the written policy, committee participants must hold a blackout on monetary policy communications around each regular meeting.
Fed staff can keep publishing the data and reports they release on a regular schedule, blackout or not. Officials cannot give a speech on where rates should go.
The reasons behind the silence
Traders react within minutes to Fed officials' words. One remark about rates can lead them to push bond yields, the dollar and stock prices up or down.
The risk grows before a vote. If an official spoke a week before the meeting, traders could read the speech as a preview of the decision. They might bet on one official's view before the committee votes.
The Fed uses the blackout to remove that risk. Between October 17 and the decision on October 28, the committee will speak on policy as a group. Each participant works under the same limit, so no one official gets the last public word before the vote.
The committee announces its decision in a written statement. The window runs past the meeting, to the Thursday after it. Those extra days let investors absorb the statement before individual officials add their own comments.
The statement will carry more weight than usual in October. The Fed's 2026 calendar lists no Summary of Economic Projections for October 27 to 28. That summary is the set of officials' published forecasts for rates, growth and inflation. Officials published one with the September 15 to 16 meeting. In October, investors will get the statement and no new forecasts.
2022: one calendar for talk and trades
Fed officials work under a second blackout, on trading. During it, they cannot buy or sell financial investments.
In 2022, the FOMC adopted new rules on officials' investments and trading. In one change, it added a day after the meeting to the trading blackout around each scheduled meeting. With that day added, the trading blackout ends on the same day as the speaking blackout.
Both limits now share one calendar. During the days officials cannot discuss policy, they cannot trade. Since 2022, the two windows end on the same day after each meeting.
Officials know more about the coming decision than investors outside the room. The Fed uses the shared calendar to keep officials' personal trades away from the days when that knowledge matters most.
Reading rate odds in the silence
Traders keep betting on the meeting's outcome while officials stay quiet. Their main tool is fed funds futures. These are contracts whose prices reflect where traders expect the Fed's benchmark rate to land. CME Group turns those prices into odds with its FedWatch tool.
A rate hike means the Fed raises its benchmark rate. October 16 was the last trading day before the blackout began. That day, FedWatch showed a 17% chance of a hike at the October 27 to 28 meeting. It put the chance of a hike by December at 89%.
Bar chart: futures priced a 17% chance of a Fed rate hike at the October meeting and 89% by December, as of October 16
Those two numbers describe timing. Traders saw a small chance of a hike in October. They saw a large chance of one by the December 8 to 9 meeting. The blackout matters in the gap between those two meetings. With each new data point before October 28, traders may shift some of that December bet into October, or out of it.
With officials silent, traders set those odds from economic data and company earnings. Earnings are the profit results companies report each quarter. Traders start from three recent numbers. Headline inflation was 3.7% in September. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy prices, was 2.6%. Producer prices, the prices businesses get for their goods and services, rose 1.3% in September.
Bond traders pushed yields down in the week before the blackout. The 10-year yield fell from 5.244% on October 9 to 5.098% on October 16. Over the five trading days to October 16, the drop came to 14.6 basis points. One hundred basis points make one percentage point.
Line chart: the US 10-year Treasury yield over the five sessions to October 16, closing at 5.098%
Stock traders turned nervous on the last day before the quiet began. The VIX is an index that tracks how much traders expect the S&P 500 to swing over the next month. The S&P 500 is a stock index of 500 large US companies. On October 16, the VIX jumped 21.45% and ended the day at 19.99.
The week with no Fed voices
From October 19 to 23, traders will watch scheduled reports in place of Fed speeches. That week's US releases include three reports. Housing starts count the new homes builders began in September. Weekly jobless claims count people who filed for unemployment benefits. The third is an early reading of business surveys known as purchasing managers' indexes. Those surveys ask company buyers whether orders and activity are rising or falling.
Three companies report earnings that week. Netflix reports results on October 20, after the stock market closes for the day. Tesla and Meta report on October 21, after the close.
Traders may shift the futures prices behind FedWatch after any of these events. A strong jobs figure or a high price number can lead them to raise the odds of a hike. A weak figure can lead them to lower those odds. Fed officials will not say how the committee reads any of it.
Traders lose a source of guidance during the silence. In return, they get a cleaner read. Between October 17 and October 28, traders will move rate odds on data, earnings and prices, with no Fed commentary mixed in.
For your portfolio
Lenders and investors watch traders' rate expectations when they set mortgage rates and the prices of bond funds and stocks. A bond fund is a fund that holds many bonds. During a blackout, traders update those expectations from published numbers.
In this window, try matching each big move in rates to a scheduled release. If yields jump at 8:30 AM ET on the day jobless claims come out, look at the claims number. If tech stocks swing after the close on October 21, the Tesla and Meta results are the likely source.
A bond fund's price moves in the opposite direction from yields like the 10-year. A stock index fund holds the stocks in an index such as the S&P 500. Its price depends on how much investors will pay for future profits. Investors change that amount as rate odds shift. With the blackout calendar in hand, you can tell which voices are missing from those prices.
The blackout ends on Thursday, October 29. From that day, officials can explain the decision in their own words. Until then, the October 28 statement will be the Fed's one word on policy. Traders will lean on data for the rest.
Sources
- stlouisfed.org
- federalreserve.gov
- federalreserve.gov
- mondovisione.com
- portfolio-terminal.com
- investrade.com
- marketbeat.com
- sec.gov
- investor.atmeta.com
Not investment advice.