Whose Fed calls held up?
The Rate-Path Expert Index scored 380 predictions from 94 experts against outcomes. Titles predicted little. Track records predicted a lot.
Every FOMC cycle produces a wall of confident commentary, and almost none of it is ever scored. The Research Lab took the 2025-2026 rate path (five meetings, three cuts, two holds) and went back through 380 timestamped public predictions from 94 named economists, strategists, and former officials, grading each against what actually happened.
The headline finding is uncomfortable for the pundit economy: the median expert scored no better than the market-implied path available for free in Fed funds futures at the moment they spoke. Being early was the most common failure mode: calls that were directionally right but a meeting or two premature. It was penalized exactly as the market penalizes it.
But the tails were real. The top decile of forecasters beat the futures-implied path consistently across meetings, and they shared a signature: they updated publicly. The experts who revised their calls when data moved scored dramatically better than those who defended a printed position. Institutional affiliation, media reach, and follower count showed no measurable relationship with accuracy.
The desk now weights its judgment layer by these scored records. When the September meeting is priced, the voices that held up in this index count for more than the voices that were loudest, and the ones that never scored at all count for very little.
The full index, every prediction, source, timestamp, and score, is available to members on the desk, with the aggregate chart reproduced in the Research Lab section of this site.