How Central Banks Use Overnight Index Swaps to Read Markets

Monetary Policy Explained with Fexingo: Central Banks, Money Supply, and Interest Rates · Jul 14, 2026 · 8m · transcript

Episode 111 of Monetary Policy Explained with Fexingo. Lucas and Luna dive into the world of overnight index swaps, or OIS. They explain how the OIS rate strips out credit risk, making it a pure measure of expected central bank policy rates. Using the June 2026 FOMC meeting as a concrete anchor, they walk through how traders and policymakers parse the OIS curve to gauge rate expectations, and why a 75-basis-point gap between the fed funds rate and OIS signaled market stress in March 2020. They also compare OIS to the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) and show how swap spreads reveal…