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FOMC minutes

The detailed account of an FOMC meeting published three weeks afterwards, which reveals the spread of opinion behind a statement that says little.

The statement is a paragraph agreed by consensus; the minutes show how contested that consensus was. Phrases like "several participants" versus "a few participants" are the market's crude vote count, and the discussion of balance sheet plans often appears here first.

Because they are three weeks stale, minutes rarely move markets much unless data since the meeting has changed the story, in which case traders re-read the debate for clues about the reaction function.

Example: the minutes reveal that "several participants" saw scope to slow balance-sheet-runoff soon. The market prices an earlier end to QT and short-dated bill yields ease a couple of basis points.

Related: fomc, beige-book, forward-guidance, dot-plot, balance-sheet-runoff

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