The Cleveland Fed is out with its inflation tracker and the numbers show inflation flattening above 2%. In particular, median CPI was at 4.09%, up from 4.08% y/y last month. It’s only declined marginally since June, when it was at 4.15%.
Median CPI is the one-month inflation rate of the component whose expenditure weight is in the 50th percentile of price changes. It’s a strange way to measure CPI but it focuses on a single component that’s right in the middle of the basket of goods.
The 16% trimmed mean (which includes the 16% of components with the most-extreme moves) is also showing signs of stickiness at 3.20% vs 3.16% a month ago.
I think the best signal here is the chart, which shows all the measures except for headline flattening, and headline has been dragged down by energy, which is a one-off.