What do whites, reds, greens and blues mean in rates trading?

They are how a rates desk names the strip, four contracts to a colour, in order. Whites are the next four quarterly contracts, so roughly the next year. Reds are the four after that, the second year. Greens are the third year and blues are the fourth. It carries on into golds, purples and oranges, but almost nobody quotes those. The packs are not fixed to particular dates: they shift along by one as contracts expire, so the whites are always the next four quarters.

How do you convert a futures price into an interest rate?

Subtract it from 100. A price of 95.90 is a rate of 4.10 percent. The convention exists so the contract behaves like a bond, rising in price when rates fall. It is an approximation rather than an identity: a futures contract settles in a straight line while the forward rate it tracks does not, and the gap is under a basis point inside a couple of years and a few basis points at the four year end.

What moves the Fed rate path?

Inflation first, because it is the Fed's price mandate: CPI, core CPI and core PCE are the prints that move the strip hardest. Employment second, because the Fed has a jobs mandate too, so nonfarm payrolls and the unemployment rate feed straight into it. Then the Fed talking. The statement, the press conference and the dot plot can move the strip further than the decision itself, because the decision is usually already priced and the guidance often is not.

Fed Rate Path: What SOFR and Fed Funds Futures Price

Q: What is the Fed rate path?

It is not a forecast anybody publishes. It is a price. Traders buy and sell contracts that settle on what interest rates actually turn out to be, and the price of those contracts is what the market is collectively paying to fix a rate for a future period. The Federal Reserve sets one rate at eight scheduled meetings a year, and everything beyond the next meeting is a guess that the market prices continuously. It is frequently wrong. What makes it worth watching is that it is the number people are actually risking money on, and that you can see how far it has moved.

Q: What is the difference between SOFR and fed funds futures?

They track two different interest rates. Fed funds is the rate at which banks lend each other money overnight, unsecured, and it is the rate the Fed targets. SOFR is the rate for overnight borrowing secured against Treasuries, and it replaced Libor as the reference rate for most US floating debt. They move together but are not the same number. On 1 September 2026 SOFR was 3.66 percent and the effective fed funds rate was 3.63 percent, three basis points apart, and SOFR also jumps at month and quarter ends when banks tidy their balance sheets.

Q: Why compare the rate curve with six and twelve months ago?

Because a curve on its own is only a level, and a level tells you very little. What tells you something is how far the same contracts have moved. Drawing today, six months ago and twelve months ago for the identical set of contracts means each line is one day's view of the whole future path, and the distance between them is the market changing its mind about a specific future quarter rather than a change of subject. Through most of 2026 the whole four year strip repriced roughly a full percentage point higher in six months.

Helious Desk · 3 September 2026 · 9 min read

1. What is the Fed rate path, and who decides it?

Nobody decides it and nobody publishes it. The Federal Reserve sets one interest rate, at eight scheduled meetings a year, and everything past the next meeting is a guess. Traders put money on that guess. They buy and sell contracts that settle on whatever rates turn out to be, and the price of those contracts is what the market is paying to fix a rate for a future period. The Fed rate path tracker turns those prices back into rates and draws them all on one chart.

That price moves all day, every trading day. When somebody says "the market expects two cuts next year", this is what they are quoting, whether they know it or not. None of which makes it right. It is not a prediction from anyone qualified to make one, and it is often wrong. It is still worth watching, because it is the number people have money on and you can see how far it has moved.

2. What is the difference between SOFR and fed funds futures?

Fed funds is what banks charge each other to borrow overnight, unsecured, and it is the rate the Fed actually targets. SOFR is the rate for overnight borrowing secured against Treasuries, and it replaced Libor as the reference rate for most US floating debt. Two rates, two sets of contracts, and mixing them up is the most common mistake in this corner of the market.

They move together, which is what makes the mistake easy, but they are not the same number. On 1 September 2026 SOFR was 3.66 percent and the effective fed funds rate was 3.63 percent, three basis points apart. SOFR also jumps at month and quarter ends, when banks tidy their balance sheets for reporting and cash gets briefly expensive. Three basis points sounds like nothing until you are quoting a rate to three decimal places, so the tracker keeps the two strips apart and never blends a number from one into the other.

3. Why does the strip go four years out?

Three month SOFR futures list a long way past four years. The trading thins out as you go, though, and a price nobody is trading is a number the exchange has marked rather than a view anybody holds. Four years is roughly where the real prices give out.

Four years is also about as far as a rates desk quotes, because of how the contracts are grouped. Sixteen quarterly contracts, four to a group, is the unit traders work in. The groups carry on beyond that, but the conversation mostly stops.

The fed funds strip covers the same span, built out of monthly contracts instead. A SOFR contract prices a three month block, a fed funds contract prices a calendar month.

4. What do whites, reds, greens and blues mean?

They are how a rates desk names the strip, and the names mean nothing at all until somebody tells you. The colours run in order, four contracts to each one. The whites are the next four quarterly contracts, so roughly the next year. The reds are the four after that, which is the second year. Greens are the third year and blues are the fourth. The naming carries on into golds, purples, oranges and so on, but almost nobody quotes those.

The point of it is speed. A trader says "reds are bid" and everyone knows that means the second year of the curve, without a single month being named.

The colours are called packs, and they are not fixed to particular dates. Each one shifts along by one as contracts expire, so the whites are always the next four quarters.

5. When does the strip roll to the next contract?

The morning after a Fed meeting, which is deliberately not the day the exchange stops trading the contract.

A quarterly contract keeps trading until the third Wednesday of the month three months after its delivery month, so it can be alive on the exchange and have nothing left to say. Once every Fed decision that could move it has already happened, whatever is left in the price is arithmetic on rates that are already set. On 2 September 2026 the June contract had a fortnight left to trade, 85 percent of the period it prices already in the past, and not one decision left inside it.

So a quarter stays on the strip only while some upcoming decision can still move it. A decision announced on one day takes effect the next, which means it can only reach a contract that is still running by then. The first contract on the chart is therefore always the one holding the next FOMC decision, rather than a period that is nearly over.

6. How do you read a futures price as an interest rate?

Subtract it from 100. A price of 95.90 is a rate of 4.10 percent. The convention exists so that the contract behaves like a bond, rising in price when rates fall, and it takes about a minute to stop being confusing.

You do not have to do it on the tracker, because every number there is already a rate. The conversion is close rather than exact, though. A futures contract settles in a straight line and the forward rate it tracks does not, so the two drift apart by under a basis point inside a couple of years and by a few basis points at the four year end. Small, but real, and worth knowing before you quote a far contract to three decimals.

7. Why compare today's curve with six and twelve months ago?

A curve on its own is only a level, and a level says very little. How far the same contracts have moved says a lot more.

So the chart carries three lines, all for the identical set of contracts: today, six months ago and twelve months ago. Each line is one day's view of the whole future path, and because the contracts underneath are the same in every case, the gap between any two lines is the market changing its mind about one specific future quarter.

Those gaps are usually wider than people expect. Through most of 2026 the whole four year strip repriced roughly a full percentage point higher in six months. Twelve months back the market was paying for rates around 3 percent well into 2028. By September 2026 it was paying for something closer to 4.3 percent over the same period.

8. What actually moves the rate path?

Inflation, mostly. CPI, core CPI and core PCE are the prints that move the strip hardest, and the US inflation tracker is the direct input. The Fed has an employment mandate alongside its price one, though, so the jobs numbers feed straight in as well: nonfarm payrolls, the unemployment rate and everything else on the jobs tracker.

Then there is the Fed talking. The statement, the press conference and the dot plot can move the strip further than the decision does, because the decision is usually priced already and the guidance often is not. The economic calendar shows what is due and when.

9. How does the rate path relate to the Treasury curve?

The rate path is only what the market expects the Fed to do. A Treasury yield carries that expectation and a good deal besides: the compensation investors want for locking their money up, the supply of bonds coming to auction, and the demand meeting it.

That extra piece is the term premium, and it is why a long yield can rise on a day when the expected policy path has not moved at all. The rates board shows the curve itself, the 2s10s spread is the shorthand for its shape, and inversion is what people mean when they say the curve is signalling something.

Which is why the two are worth reading together. If the front of the rate path drops and long yields do not follow, the market is pricing cuts without pricing a slowdown, and those are different stories.

10. How do you use the tracker, and is it free?

The rate path tracker is free to read and there is no account to make. It opens on the strip: every contract left to right, further into the future as you go, with the three vantage dates drawn over each other. Switch between the SOFR and fed funds strips, and turn any of the three dates off when a comparison is getting crowded.

The chart underneath follows single contracts through time. Take any four quarters, or the front contract of each pack, and you can watch what the market paid for them day by day.

If you would rather pull the numbers than read them, every figure is there as JSON too, alongside the rest of the Helious datasets. For the vocabulary around all of this there is a guide to reading an economic release, and help and pricing answer most of the rest.