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A consumer discloses information to a multi-product seller, which learns about the consumer’s preferences, sets prices, and makes product recommendations. While the consumer benefits from accurate product recommendations, the seller may use the information to price discriminate.

We measure soft information contained in the congressional testimonies of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairs and analyze its effect on financial markets. Increases in the Chair’s text-, voice-, or face-emotion indices during these testimonies generally raise stock prices and lower their volatility.

We document a strong asymmetry in the evolution of federal funds rate expectations and map this observed asymmetry into measures of monetary policy uncertainty. We show that periods of monetary policy tightening and easing are distinctly related to downside (policy rate is higher than expected) and upside (policy rate is lower than expected) uncertainty.