The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Releases FREDcast Forecasting Game

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis recently released FREDcast, an interactive forecasting game that allows players to forecast four economic variables, track their forecasts’ accuracy on scoreboards and compete with friends and other players in leagues.

To participate, players create personal FRED accounts. Then they log in to FREDcast and make predictions for four important economic indicators: real gross domestic product (GDP), employment, unemployment and the consumer price index (CPI). Forecasts are compared with the actual release numbers and scored for accuracy. Based on these scores, users receive a total monthly score.

For example, from Jan. 1 to Jan. 20, users submitted forecasts for the January unemployment rate, CPI and payroll employment, and for first-quarter GDP. Forecasts are due by the 20th of each month, and scores are released as the economic data come out. View exact release dates on FRED’s data release calendar: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/releases/calendar.

Players can judge their performances by looking at rankings within leagues or against all FREDcast users.

For more information and to sign up, visit https://research.stlouisfed.org/useraccount/fredcast.