The Cleveland Fed nowcast for February 2026 as of today is 2.34%.
Figure 1: Year-on-Year headline CPI inflation (bold blue), CPI ex-shelter (red), Truflation inflation (green). Truflation measures are at mid-month, except for February, which is for 2/8/2026. CPI-headline January and February 2026 observation is Cleveland Fed nowcasts of 2/8/2026. Source: BLS, Truflation, Cleveland Fed, and author’s calculations.
If the true underlying y/y inflation rate is 0.68%, we must be coming close to deflation, which typically accompanies very slow growth in aggregate demand.
See more discussion relating to the Truflation index here.
An interesting commentary on year-ago predictions and results.
https://www.facebook.com/tom.wilson.1840/posts/pfbid022thqdP1a4Cjr9WCU4RExQjzE9bAepTADskH5Aqg5kZwkX32m6wSYmUTQYK11oxHRl
Sooner or later there will be higher inflation, lower GDP growth, and a stock market correction. Just not now.
The biggest failure in predictions were that they failed to predict that Trump would make it TACO Tuesday every other week. But the concept that predictions are based on presumptions and that when those presumptions fail it’s not the predictions but the presumptions that are at fault. But that is an order of magnitude above the head of that clown.
I studied marketing under the late Eugene Webb who eschewed most ‘survey’ techniques and espoused study of unobtrusive measures. This is similar