AI‑Powered Federal Reserve Sentiment Index

What is FTN?

The F‑Tone Index measures the tone of Federal Reserve communications— speeches, FOMC statements, and minutes, plus regional Fed speeches, testimony, and Fed blog posts—using artificial intelligence. On every visit, our system reads the latest available primary sources, assigns a hawkish/dovish score to each, and publishes a fresh 0–100 reading.

The dashboard displays two values, in the format 73.6 → 71.2: the raw instant score (the simple average of all individual document scores from the current analysis) and the smoothed 7‑day moving average, so you can see both the immediate reaction and the underlying trend.

A companion Market Expectation score, produced by a separate service, combines the 2‑year Treasury yield (via FRED), the 2y/10y spread (FRED), and the US Dollar Index (DXY, via Yahoo Finance) to show what markets are collectively pricing about the Fed's next moves.

0 = extremely dovish (signalling rate cuts / easing)  |  100 = extremely hawkish (signalling rate hikes / tightening)

1. Radical transparency: The FTN Index is built on one core principle: every score is traceable to its source, every number is verifiable. No black boxes. No hidden logic. Just open data, openly presented.

2. Scale: The F‑Tone Index ranges from 0 (extremely dovish) to 100 (extremely hawkish). It measures the Federal Reserve’s policy tone as expressed in official speeches, FOMC statements, and minutes, plus regional Fed speeches, testimony, and Fed blog posts. A companion Market Expectation score is produced by a separate service using Treasury yields and the US Dollar Index.

3. What “hawkish/dovish” means: The score reflects a combined assessment of two factors:
– Imminence: how soon a change to the federal funds rate is expected.
– Sharpness: how large or decisive that change appears.
These factors are weighed equally. The AI analyses the text for language about inflation, employment, growth, and policy guidance, then returns a single number capturing both the urgency and magnitude of potential rate actions.
If no new Fed communications are available on a given day, the index re‑evaluates the most recent documents, and the source count reflects the number of documents analysed.

4. Dual display: The headline shows live → 7d avg:
– Live score – the immediate, un‑smoothed average of today's document scores. It reacts instantly to new Fed language.
– 7d avg – a 7‑day moving average of the raw scores, designed to filter out noise and reveal the trend.
The ▲ / ▼ / — indicator reflects the daily change in the 7d avg.
Traders and short‑term decision‑makers may find the raw score more useful; longer‑term investors and analysts may prefer the smoothed trend.

5. Market expectation: Below the FTN data, a separate section shows what Treasury markets and the US Dollar Index are collectively pricing about the Fed’s next moves. It uses the 2‑year Treasury yield (via FRED), the 2y/10y spread (FRED), and the US Dollar Index DXY (via Yahoo Finance). It is not part of the document‑driven FTN index – it’s a companion indicator for comparison.

6. Qualitative label: The “Hawkish” / “Dovish” label always follows the smoothed score, providing a stable, trend‑based anchor. If the live score moves 5 points or more in the opposite direction of the smoothed trend, a persistent alert (⚠️) appears on the dashboard for up to 24 hours — as an early warning of a potential trend change.

7. Confidence: HIGH, MEDIUM, or LOW reflects the breadth of sources analysed and the total text volume. HIGH means ≥4 sources and >8,000 characters of Fed text were processed; MEDIUM means ≥2 sources and >3,000 characters; LOW means fewer sources or less text. It indicates how much information the day’s reading is based on, not the accuracy of the AI score.

8. Fed policy rates (flip‑card): The flip‑card on the FTN tile shows the three key rates the Federal Reserve directly controls: the Fed Funds target range, the Interest on Reserve Balances (IORB) rate, and the Overnight Reverse Repo (ON RRP) rate. These are displayed so you can compare the Fed's actual policy stance with the sentiment expressed in its communications. The data is sourced directly from the Federal Reserve via FRED.

9. Data availability: When a fresh index computation cannot be retrieved for any reason, the dashboard displays the most recent successfully computed reading, marked as ‘last reading’.

The live dashboard is available to everyone, no login required.
A free JSON API is also available for non‑commercial use.

For API access, trial subscriptions, or press inquiries, contact us directly:

ftone.index@gmail.com  |  @FToneIndex