Replays · US CPI · 12 Jun 2024, 13:30 UK

Good news at 13:30, a cooler Fed at 19:00

On 12 June 2024 the inflation report and a Fed decision landed on the same day. The CPI came first, and it was the best inflation news of the year. The Fed came five and a half hours later, and it was less generous.

US core CPI, % change from the month before, first prints (ALFRED), by reference month.

A soft print

Headline prices were unchanged in May, and Reuters described the result as unexpected. Annual inflation slipped to 3.3%. Core inflation rose 0.2% on the month, the smallest rise of the year so far, after three months of 0.4% and one of 0.3%. Cheaper petrol did much of the work on the headline.

Up on the first candle

Bitcoin was $68,004 at 13:30 UK and jumped 1.9% within five minutes. Almost all of its first hour happened right there: it was +1.77% at the hour, #16 of 117 CPI releases in our data and 3.8 times a normal hour. It kept edging up and peaked about 3% higher at 16:00 UK.

First-hour change after the release, %.

Solana led, +3.6% in the first hour, 6.4 times its normal hour. Chainlink and Dogecoin kept climbing after that and were both above 5% at four hours. US stocks rose more gently, with the Nasdaq 100 ETF +0.7% after an hour.

Then the Fed

At 19:00 UK the Fed held rates at 5.25–5.50%. Its new projections showed a median of just one quarter-point cut in 2024, down from three in March. Powell said the data so far had not given the committee the greater confidence it needed, while adding that recent readings had been more favourable. Reuters noted some analysts called the projections stale, since they were mostly written before the CPI came out.

That decision falls after our four-hour window but inside the 24-hour one. Bitcoin was +2.0% at four hours and -0.25% at 24 hours, so the CPI gain was gone by the next afternoon. A week later it was -4.3%, and Dogecoin -12%.

When two events share a day, the windows separate them. The one-hour and four-hour figures here belong to the CPI. The 24-hour figure belongs to both.

Sources: release time and figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain), first-print values via ALFRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Crypto: Bitstamp 5-minute candles; SPY/QQQ: IEX. No consensus forecasts are shown because they are proprietary; comparisons are with the previous release. “× normal hour” compares the first-hour move with the median move in matched quiet hours. How we measure it.