How many rate hikes are on tap? Wall Street hopes to connect the Fed’s ‘dots.’

The Federal Reserve's policy meeting this week carries more weight than usual, because the decision on rates is only half the story. If officials raise the benchmark rate to fight inflation, as widely expected, attention will shift quickly to the "dot plot" — the anonymous projections in which each policymaker marks where they expect rates to be in coming years.

Those dots matter because they offer the clearest signal of how much further borrowing costs might climb. Markets have spent months debating whether the Fed will tighten aggressively or ease off, and the projections could settle that argument, at least temporarily.

What to watch: the spread of dots for the next two years, and whether they cluster around a higher peak than investors currently assume. A wider or higher cluster suggests more hikes ahead; a lower one suggests the end may be nearer. Either way, the reaction in bonds and rate-sensitive sectors will show how closely Wall Street's expectations align with the Fed's own.