The Hairy Chart, Animated

Project

Data Visualization

Build an animated hairy plot of the federal funds target rate and its forecasts, in a 16:9 frame, to screen-record.

Author

Curtis Kephart

Published

Oct 23, 2026

Data

Range Scene Start End Options-implied hairs

Theming · colors, lines, text and frame

Preset Font Title Subtitle Background Title and legend Axis labels and caption Grid lines Recession shading Target rate width Glow on the target rate Frame padding px Legend Date in the background Always include 0%

Treasury Forward CurveWidth Opacity

Options-Implied (SOFR)Width Opacity

FOMC Median ProjectionWidth Opacity

Professional ForecastersWidth Opacity

Widths and padding are in pixels of the 1920 by 1080 frame. Opacity is how the hairs rest once they settle.

Play

Timing Speed years a second Hair speed Afterglow Tip glow Start delay s

Record Keys: Space plays or pauses, R restarts, F goes fullscreen, the arrow keys step a month while paused.

Read more about hairy plots, and how this one was made, in the blog post The Hairy Chart. Explore the interactive version, or see the R notebook and Python notebook for how each series is built. The code and data are on GitHub.

Notes and Sources

Federal Funds Target Rate. The rate the Federal Open Market Committee announces it is aiming for. A single number until December 2008, a quarter-point range from then on; the line marks the middle of the range.

Treasury Forward Curve. What the Treasury bond market implies about future short rates, backed out daily by Federal Reserve Board staff from a smooth curve fitted across the whole maturity spectrum. A forward rate is the expected future short rate plus a term premium, so it is not a pure expectation. One hair per FOMC meeting, since 1994.

Options-Implied (SOFR). What options traders are collectively betting, as a full probability distribution over where the overnight rate will average in a future three-month window. Each hair is the mean for each upcoming window, as of one day. Daily since March 2023.

FOMC Median Projection. Four times a year each of the Federal Reserve’s senior policymakers writes down where they think the federal funds rate should be at the end of each of the next few years. This is the middle answer, published since September 2015.

Professional Forecasters. Every quarter the Philadelphia Fed asks a few dozen professional forecasters where the three-month Treasury bill rate will be over the next five quarters, and publishes the median. The bill normally sits a little below fed funds, so a forecast of the bill rate works as a rough forecast of the policy rate that runs slightly low.

Recessions. US recessions, shaded from the business cycle peak to the trough, using the turning points determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Each hair starts on the target line at the date its forecast was made, and runs from there to the source’s first forecast.

Each hair appears on the date its forecast was made, so every frame shows only what was known on the date on screen.