The Letter F

Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)-the 12 member committee which sets credit and interest rate policies for the Federal Reserve System. The FOMC has eight scheduled meetings per year. The last unscheduled meeting was held via telephone on 1/3/01. The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the seven members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve are members of the FOMC. The remaining four members are picked for one year terms on a rotating basis from the presidents of the other Reserve Banks. If you want more information about the FOMC including a list of current members, transcripts and a schedule of meetings go to the Federal Reserve Board web site. The Federal Reserve cut 1 percentage point from the fed funds rate during January 2001. The last time that there was a full percentage cut in a single month was in 1984.

Float-the number of shares of a stock that trade on the open market. Stocks that have small floats tend to be much more volatile than ones with large floats.

Footsie-name used for the FT-SE 100 index which is the blue chip index in the United Kingdom.

Updated 2/25/01