January inflation profile looks skewed towards an upside surprise. Over the last nine events, only one U.S. headline CPI metric has been a miss, this translates to an average surprise of 0.9pp
We have not seen a January headline CPI number in line with economists' survey median since 2015. Forecasting is difficult, and lower BLS survey response rates across categories do not make it easier. A recent Bloomberg article reported 2023 inflation completed survey response rate at 73%
The consensus expects headline CPI falling to 2.9% Y/y. A -/+ surprise one standard deviation move would see the figure at 2.8%/3.0%
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