The bad news is that probabilities for the path of the federal funds rate estimated from options on federal funds rate futures will no longer be a regular feature of macroblog. The really good news is that you can now get them everyday from the Cleveland Fed. Here's what you can find, and where you find it:
-- Pictures of the probabilities estimated for the most recent trading day, with links to the data in both Powerpoint and Excel spreadsheet format.
-- A handy FAQ page.
-- Background publications describing the market for options on federal funds rate, and the methodology used to obtain the estimated probabilities. (This section will also contain any future research papers related to the topic.)
From this day on, there will also be an archive of all published files. In the works: A simple user-friendly program that will allow you to estimate probabilities based on your own specifications.
Although I will continue to highlight the estimates when they seem particularly interesting, I will no longer automatically feature them every week. I know a lot of you checked in for that information specifically, and hope you keep coming back nonetheless. I'll try to say something worthwhile every now and then.
Thanks to all of you who have supported my efforts to make these estimates available through this weblog. And many, many thanks to John Carlson, Ben Craig, Will Melick, Monica Crabtree-Reusser, Erkin Sahinoz, and Pat Higgins who have ushered the Cleveland Fed site to reality.
UPDATE: Oops. I inadvertently omitted the name of Saeed Zaman from the list of those integral to bringing the fed funds futures site to fruition.