Inflation

Inflation prints are the policy-relevant macro releases. They drive the Fed's reaction function, which drives yields, which drives risk-asset valuations. Two panels, CPI and PCE, cover the standard inflation reads with the scenario tooling around base effects.

CPI, Consumer Price Index

The CPI panel plots year-on-year headline CPI over time, with the most recent print highlighted. The standard decomposition (headline vs core; goods vs services) is available as toggles.

Headline CPI, all items including food and energy. The number that gets headlines.
Core CPI, excluding food and energy. The stickier read; what the Fed actually focuses on.
Services CPI, the most domestically driven and slowest to move. When services CPI cools, the Fed has real reason to ease.

PCE, Personal Consumption Expenditures

The PCE panel plots PCE inflation, the Fed's preferred measure. Headline PCE includes all items (food and energy); Core PCE strips those out, and Core is the read the Fed actually anchors policy to. The methodology differs from CPI in composition weights and treatment of substitution; PCE tends to run 0.2-0.4pp below CPI in normal times.

The PCE panel includes a scenario / base-effects tool: project forward different month-over-month paths and see what year-on-year prints would result. Useful when you're trying to think through "if MoM runs 0.2% for the next six months, where does YoY end up?"

How crypto reads inflation

Two channels:

Through Fed policy. Hot inflation prints tighten financial conditions (yields rise, risk assets sell off). Cool prints loosen them. Crypto reacts to the second-order Fed reaction more than the first-order inflation print itself, what matters is whether the Fed now has room to ease.
Through real rates. Real yields (nominal yields minus inflation expectations) are what discount risk assets. Falling real yields = risk assets revalue higher. Inflation prints affect real yields by shifting both the nominal rate and the inflation-expectation component simultaneously.

Reading the prints

Print < consensus = bullish for risk. Yields fall, equities and crypto rally.
Print = consensus = neutral, but watch the internals (services, supercore).
Print > consensus = bearish for risk. Yields rise, sell-off candidate.

Magnitude matters. A 0.1pp surprise often gets faded within a day; a 0.3pp surprise can drive a multi-week regime.

Open in the pro terminal

CPIHeadline + core CPI year-on-year.
PCEPCE inflation with scenarios + base-effects tool.