Latest PCE Inflation Report: What Core PCE Means for the Fed

— Latest reading

— About this report

The PCE price index, published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, covers everything US households consume, including spending made on their behalf, such as employer-paid health insurance. The Fed states its 2% inflation goal in terms of PCE, and watches the core version closely as a guide to the underlying trend.

PCE usually arrives a couple of weeks after CPI, and much of it can be estimated in advance from CPI and producer-price data that are already out. So markets often react to it less than to CPI — the bigger moves tend to come when it differs from what those earlier reports implied.

— What a move tends to mean

These rules of thumb describe how markets have tended to react when a reading comes in above or below economists’ forecasts. Market North does not publish forecasts — the comparison on this page is with the previous reading, which is not the same thing.

— Beyond stocks

The read-through to gold and silver runs mainly through interest rates: inflation that keeps the Fed from cutting tends to hold real yields up, which has historically been a headwind for precious metals.

RelatedWhat Is Core PCE, and Why the Fed Watches ItHow Real Interest Rates Move Gold and SilverWhy Rising Treasury Yields Weigh on Gold

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