I must first disclose I have never been to a fortune teller. But I understand there are some who are fascinated by the art of tasseography or identifying symbols and interpreting messages found in the shapes formed by tea leaves at the bottom of a cup.

Some might say the famous “dot plot” made by members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the economist’s version of reading tea leaves. Take a scoop of economic data, add them to a cup of prognostication, swirl three times, then close your eyes and pick your dot location. I’m sure it’s far more complicated and intentional than that. At least I hope it is.

The FOMC released its quarterly Summary of Economic Projections (SEP) last week, which includes the “Dot Plot” used by the Federal Reserve to communicate its policymakers' economic projections and expectations for the future. This chart provides a visual representation of individual committee members' forecasts, helping market participants, economists, and the public to gauge the central bank's outlook on key economic indicators. Today we will take a look at what the FOMC dot plot is, how to interpret the latest chart and what the FOMC is predicting for the economy.

You may already be retired, so you might not think this article is for you. You already have your investment plan in place and what could go wrong anyway. Well politicians change, policies change, laws change, social norms change and the economy changes.  Your health also changes. In my life getting older hasn’t been the problem, it is the side effects. For those not retired yet, hopefully these topics will help you in planning your retirement.

From Investopedia, “Seasonality is a characteristic of a time series in which the data experiences regular and predictable changes that recur every year. Seasonality can affect different aspects of a business or economy based on the seasons, such as consumer spending, inventories, staffing and growth.”

That’s a bit dry, even for me. Another way to think of seasonality is that there are some months that are better for investment returns than others. Seasonality is present in individual stocks, sectors, sub-sectors and the broader markets. Each may have similar or wildly different seasonality characteristics. For this discussion I am focusing on the S&P 500 (SPX) over the last four market cycles. A market cycle is a five-year period. Seasonality data is available going back decades.