The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the monetary policymaking body of the Federal Reserve System. It consists of 12 members, including the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and four of the remaining eleven Reserve Bank presidents, who serve one-year terms on a rotating basis. The FOMC holds eight regularly scheduled meetings per year, approximately every six weeks. The Committee may also hold unscheduled meetings as necessary to review economic and financial developments.

At these meetings, the Committee reviews economic and financial conditions, determines the appropriate stance of monetary policy, and assesses the risks to its long-run goals of price stability and sustainable economic growth. The FOMC issues a policy statement following each regular meeting that summarizes the Committees economic outlook and the policy decision at that meeting. The Chairman holds a press briefing after each FOMC meeting to discuss the FOMCs policy decisions and to provide context for those decisions.

The FOMC meetings are not held in public, and the minutes of the scheduled meetings are released three weeks after the date of the policy decision. The FOMC meetings are the subject of much speculation on Wall Street, as analysts attempt to predict whether the Fed will tighten or loosen the money supply with a resulting increase or decrease in interest rates. The FOMC meetings are a time of particular volatility for traders because any change in federal fund rates can affect a range of economic variables such as short-term interest rates, foreign exchange rates, long-term interest rates, employment output, and prices of goods and services.