2026-01-13 10:27:29

Tuesday night at 21:30, the US will release the December CPI data. How should we interpret this inflation report? The market's general expectation is that price pressures remain stubborn, and there is still some distance to go to reach the Federal Reserve's 2% target.

According to survey data compiled by Bloomberg and FactSet, the overall CPI is expected to increase by 0.3% month-over-month and 2.7% year-over-year. Excluding volatile items like food and energy, core CPI is also expected to rise by 0.3% month-over-month and 2.7% year-over-year. It seems inflation is still somewhat sticky.

However, the Nowcast model from the Cleveland Fed offers a slightly more optimistic forecast, predicting a core CPI month-over-month increase of only 0.22%. But the mainstream Wall Street view still believes that inflation hasn't cooled off significantly.

**The key is to understand the distortions behind the data**

Interpreting this data requires some expertise because the US federal government shutdown in October and November last year had a noticeable impact on data collection. Economists at US banks have pointed out this issue—due to the government shutdown, some data in October couldn't be collected at all, so the Bureau of Labor Statistics used a "carry-forward estimate" in November to fill the gaps. This means that December's CPI data is actually being compared to August prices, not the previous months, which can technically lead to an upward bias.

Additionally, there's a detail: November's data may have been artificially suppressed due to early collection during the holiday promotional season. Citigroup analysts believe that as this temporary factor diminishes, combined with rebounds in prices for hotels, airfare, and clothing, December's core goods prices will experience a "mechanical rebound."

Therefore, some institutions, like US banks, question the authenticity of this data. In other words, December's CPI might appear higher than the actual situation due to the data collection methods, not because inflation is genuinely surging again.

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AirdropHunterKing

· 16h ago

Oh man, this data gameplay is just like when I used to hunt for wool and verify wallet addresses—it's all tricks. The government keeps shutting down and messing around, and the data doesn't match up. In the end, the CPI we see is quite different from the actual situation.

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LightningSentry

· 16h ago

Wait, can a government shutdown still affect data like this? So is this 2.7% really true or not? It doesn't seem easy to compare.

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rugpull_ptsd

· 16h ago

It's the government shutdown again, who would believe such inflated data?

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InscriptionGriller

· 16h ago

Uh, it's another government shutdown causing trouble. The data all has to be estimated through "carried forward estimates," what's the difference between this and crypto project teams changing their whitepapers, haha.

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