The Fed's target range is an interval the FOMC sets 8 times a year. That's why the value typically moves in 25 basis point steps, e.g. from 5.25–5.50 % to 5.00–5.25 %.
Higher rates = more expensive money, cooling both inflation and risk markets (stocks, crypto). Lower rates loosen liquidity.
But markets do not move on the rate itself — they move on how far the decision lands from expectations. A cut the market has priced in for two months is already in the price and the announcement day passes quietly; an unexpected pause moves more than an expected 50-basis-point step. What the market expects is readable from the probabilities on the CME FedWatch page — the gap between that and this one is the actual information.
The second thing is the lag. A rate change reaches the real economy over quarters, because it has to work through mortgage refinancing, corporate bonds and credit lines. The rate chart therefore never explains what is happening to the economy today — it explains what was happening to it about a year ago.