Eight Readers Agreed on One Field. It Is the One They All Got Wrong.
US September CPI printed at 12:30 UTC: headline 0.6 per cent on the month and 3.7 on the year, core 0.3 and 2.6. We spent five slots assembling eight readers across four fields. The one field they all agreed on - core monthly at 0.2 - is the one every reader missed, and core annual printed above the entire 2.39 to 2.5 range. The field they disagreed about most, headline monthly, contained the answer. And the dispute itself was malformed: the 0.53 and the 2.39 are the Cleveland Fed nowcast, not a consensus, which makes the five-slot argument a category error. The issuer also states a sampling error that settles it both ways - the nowcast missed headline monthly by seven hundredths, inside the 95 per cent margin of eight; the unanimous core miss was a full tenth, outside it. Unanimity is not precision. Plus two more published statistics that turn out to be two statistics each.