RATE
Fed funds rate
FRED FEDFUNDS · monthly · reference line only.
The faint line behind your asset curves is the Federal Funds Effective Rate — the benchmark U.S. interest rate. It is context, not a calculation: it shows you what rate environment your investment lived through, but it never enters any asset's value. We draw it so a stock's run can be read against the rates of its era, not in a vacuum.
How it works
01
We load the real benchmark rate from public data.
Each month's rate is the Federal Funds Effective Rate published by FRED (series FEDFUNDS), loaded into our database by the data pipeline. We align it to the same monthly timeline as your simulation.
02
We fill small gaps by carrying the last rate forward.
If a month has no published value, it inherits the most recent prior rate (forward-fill). The seed value is the latest rate known before your simulation starts.
03
We draw it as a background reference — nothing more.
The rate is attached to each month of the timeline purely for the chart. It does not discount, grow, or adjust any asset. Removing it would not change a single value in your results.
What you put in
(none)There is nothing to set — the rate is loaded automatically for the simulation period.
Assumptions
- 01The rate is the FRED FEDFUNDS effective rate, not the Fed's announced target range.
- 02Months without published data inherit the most recent prior rate (forward-fill).
- 03If the rate table is empty (pipeline not yet run), every month falls back to 0.0 and the line is flat.
- 04The rate is reference-only — it is never used in any asset's value calculation.
Key terms
Federal Funds RateThe interest rate at which U.S. banks lend reserves to each other overnight; the Fed's primary policy lever.
Effective rateThe volume-weighted average of actual overnight transactions — what banks really paid, not the target the Fed announces.
FREDFederal Reserve Economic Data — the St. Louis Fed's public economic data service.
Forward-fillFilling a missing month with the most recent prior value so the series has no gaps.
What it is — and isn't
- ✓Shows the real benchmark rate over your exact simulation window.
- ✗Not a forecast — it is historical, and the line stops where the data ends.
- ✗Does not contribute to any asset's return; it is purely a visual reference.
- ✗Is the effective rate, not the target-range upper or lower bound the Fed publishes.
FAQ
Does the Fed rate change my results?
No. It is drawn behind the chart for context only. Every asset value would be identical with the line removed.
Why is the rate flat at zero in some runs?
If the rate data has not been loaded for your window (or the pipeline hasn't run), we fall back to 0 rather than guessing, which shows as a flat line.
Source series
Audit log
v1.0Jun 27 2026First reference-rate methodology page, written from the actual fed-rate fetch logic.