The David Lin Report · Saturday, September 19, 2026
Economist Anna Wang highlighted that the CPI report's upside surprise was driven by minor factors like wireless phone plans and Airbnb policy changes, not broad inflationary trends. She suggests this is a consequence of the Fed's move to reduce forward guidance and rely more on market signals, which limits their flexibility to address nuanced data.
“when you look at the CPI report, it really surprised by 5 bips. So we had going in 0.24 for core CPI, the actual is 0.29. And that 5 bips of surprise is entirely due to wireless telephone plans and Airbnb shifting their policies, like very minutia things, right? Not a broad, uh, disinflationary, uh, impulse increase, right?”
“And so, however, it rounds up on the Bloomberg terminal from a baseline of, uh, 0.2 to a baseline of 0.3, and that is considered an upside surprise and not contaminated by Fed speak.”
“I think that the lack of room to discuss the disinflationary details in the report is a result of this attempt at reducing forward guidance and, uh, limiting the flexibility and maneuverability around the details of a report.”