Central bank communication shifts: hawkish or dovish

This page tracks the direction each central bank's tone is moving — whether its most recent statement read hawkish or dovish relative to the one before it. It covers the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Canada, and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

What a directional shift means

A shift is not the rate decision itself; it is the change in stance the language signals. A bank can hold rates steady and still turn hawkish by dropping an easing bias, or dovish by acknowledging that inflation is easing. Central banks publish their reasoning, not just the outcome — the European Central Bank explains its decisions through its statements and press conferences, which is what makes each shift in stance visible in the wording.

From direction back to the words

Each directional call here is backed by the specific edits that produced it, so you can move from "this statement turned hawkish" to the exact sentences that changed. To see the full word-by-word comparison for every bank, open what central banks changed, or read a single bank's history from its archive above.