Almost every Fed market prices what the committee will do. Kalshi lists one that prices what the committee will say.
KXDOTPLOT is a ladder of contracts on the median year-end 2026 dot in the Summary of Economic Projections the Fed publishes alongside its September 16 decision. Twelve strikes, 3.3% through 4.4%, each asking whether the median projection lands above that level. It is a market on the Fed's own forecast, and as far as I can tell nobody else publishes a read on it.
Here is what it is pricing, how to derive it correctly, and the settlement clause that can make all twelve strikes lose on the same afternoon.
1. The live read
The ladder as of August 26, 2026:
| Strike | Bid–ask | Implied |
|---|---|---|
| > 3.70% | 77–87¢ | ~82% |
| > 3.80% | 51–61¢ | ~56% |
| > 3.90% | 26–36¢ | ~31% |
| > 4.00% | 11–20¢ | ~16% |
The cumulative distribution crosses 50% between 3.80% and 3.90%.
That crossing is the number worth quoting, and it is worth being precise about why. The individual strike prices are soft — the spreads run nine to ten cents, so "56%" is really "somewhere between 51% and 61%." But the crossing survives that. Read the ladder off the bids only and it crosses between 3.80 and 3.90. Read it off the asks only and it crosses between 3.80 and 3.90. Both corners of the book agree, even though neither strike price is pinned. A crossing point is not a level, which is why it holds when the components do not.
And the Fed cannot publish an arbitrary number inside that window. SEP projections land on quarter-point midpoints, so the only value the committee can actually print between 3.80% and 3.90% is 3.875% — the midpoint of a 3.75–4.00% target range.
2. What that implies
Today's target range is 3.50–3.75%. Midpoint: 3.625%.
A median dot of 3.875% is therefore exactly one 25 basis point hike above where rates sit right now.
Set that against what the same exchange prices for the meeting itself. KXFED on September 16 reads roughly:
- Hold 64%
- Hike 25bp 34%
- Cut 25bp ~0%
The two markets are telling a consistent story, and it is not the story most Fed coverage is telling. The committee probably does nothing in September — but the market expects it to project a higher year-end rate than today's, and a cut has been priced to essentially zero. That is a market that has stopped arguing about whether the easing cycle resumes and started arguing about how much tightening is left.
The gap between those two contracts is the interesting part. A hold with a hawkish dot is a specific, tradeable outcome, and it is the one the board currently favors.
3. The call
I am not going to pretend this is a high-conviction position, because the book will not support one.
Total lifetime volume across all twelve strikes is 1,817 contracts since the series opened in June. Seven of the twelve have never traded at all. Twenty-four-hour volume is zero. The widest quote on the ladder is ten cents.
That matters in a specific way: thin books do not just mean wide spreads, they mean the price may simply not have been updated. A strike with no trades and a ten-cent quote is a market maker's placeholder, not a consensus. The honest read is that KXDOTPLOT gives you the shape of expectations — hold-with-a-hawkish-dot, cuts written off — and not a price you should take a large position against.
Where it is genuinely useful is as a cross-check. If you hold a view on the September rate decision, the dot plot ladder tells you whether that view is consistent with what the committee is expected to forecast. A trader pricing cuts at the September meeting is fighting a ladder that has cuts near zero and a median dot a hike above spot. That disagreement is worth resolving before sizing anything. If you want to work it through formally, the Bayes Updater will take your prior and the market's and show you where they diverge.
Live ladder, updating every thirty minutes: Fed Rate Tracker. Meeting-specific board: September 2026 FOMC.
4. Resolution criteria — read this before you trade it
This is where the contract earns closer reading than most, and where the real risk lives.
The ladder is not exhaustive. All twelve strikes can lose at once.
From the contract's own clarification, dated June 20, 2026: if the Federal Reserve publishes no Summary of Economic Projections in connection with the September 16 meeting, or publishes one that does not include a median year-end 2026 federal funds rate projection, every market in the ladder resolves No.
Not void. Not refunded. Every YES holder at every strike loses simultaneously.
Two consequences follow. First, that outcome is covered by no strike, so its probability sits inside all twelve prices at once as a uniform haircut — which is why the strikes do not sum to 100%, and why any analysis that rescales them to sum to 100% has quietly assumed the Fed will publish. Second, it is the one risk on this contract you cannot hedge inside the ladder, because there is no side of it that wins.
In practice the September meeting is a scheduled SEP meeting and the Fed has published one at every March, June, September and December meeting for years. The probability is small. It is not zero, and it is not priced anywhere you can see it.
The median is a midpoint, not an upper bound.
The contract's secondary rules are explicit: the underlying is the published median year-end 2026 projection, not the midpoint or bounds of the target range. In practice the SEP median is quoted as a midpoint — so 3.875% describes a 3.75–4.00% range. Compare that against today's 3.75% upper bound and it looks like a rounding error. Compare it correctly against today's 3.625% midpoint and it is a full hike. Same number, two readings, one of which loses money.
Strictly greater than.
A median landing exactly on a strike resolves No. Given that the Fed prints in quarter-point midpoints and the strikes sit on tenths, an exact landing is unlikely — but the asymmetry is real at the boundary strikes.
One meeting's SEP, with no revision mechanism.
The contract settles on what is published at that meeting. A subsequent revision, a correction, or a different figure in the December SEP does not reopen it.
Full settlement rules and the complete trap list: How KXDOTPLOT settles.
Prices in this piece were current at publication on August 26, 2026 and the ladder moves. The live read on the Fed Rate Tracker is the number to trade against, not this one. Trade responsibly.