It hasn’t helped that Powell has spent his early days being critical of some concepts that have served as Fed policy lodestars in the past. He’s stressed the wide bands of uncertainty surrounding economists’ estimates of R star -- the neutral interest rate that neither spurs nor curbs growth -- and U star -- the unemployment rate that is sustainable in the long-run.

Not Clear
So when Powell said that interest rates were far from neutral, it’s perhaps not surprising that investors didn’t know exactly what was meant.

“They do seem very proud of their transparency but if that transparency is just them saying we’re not sure of anything, then it’s unclear what they are so proud of,” Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist for JPMorgan Chase & Co., said in an email.

The result is that even seasoned Fed watchers are puzzling over where Powell falls in the so-called dot plot of policy makers’ interest rate projections. That’s in contrast with Yellen: Economists were pretty certain which anonymous dot she represented in the quarterly forecasts.

“We don’t know where Powell is,” said HSBC Securities Chief U.S. economist Kevin Logan, adding, “He’s probably somewhere in the middle” of the dot plot but whether he favors two, three or four rate increases next year is unclear.

Logan said the Fed is approaching an “inflection point” for monetary policy and its communications strategy. For years, its task was clear: nurture a slow-motion recovery by running an expansionary policy. But now, with unemployment at a 48-year low and inflation on target, the Fed is getting out of the business of providing the economy with support. What comes afterward is less clear.

The improving economy is also allowing the Fed to step back from holding the market’s hand by scaling back the forward guidance it provides investors on where rates are headed. It moved in that direction in June when it stopped describing policy as “accommodative” in its post-meeting statement.

Still, there’s only so far the Fed can go in that direction as long as it’s publishing a policy dot plot.

“They are trying to dial back from forward guidance but it’s difficult to go as far as you might like to when you’re still doing these dot plots,” said Johns Hopkins University professor Jonathan Wright.

Wrightson ICAP LLC chief economist Lou Crandall said he understands how investors could have misread Powell’s Oct. 3 remarks and that the chairman himself probably wishes he hadn’t made them.