US Consumer Prices Rise in March

April 30, 2018 Share Print 0

U.S. consumer prices accelerated in the year to March, with a measure of underlying inflation surging to near the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target as last year’s weak readings dropped out of the calculation.

The rise in the annual inflation measures reported by the Commerce Department on Monday was anticipated by economists and Fed officials and is not expected to alter the U.S. central bank’s gradual pace of interest rate increases.

Annual inflation readings in March of last year were held down by large declines in the price of cell phone service plans.

Consumer prices as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index jumped 2.0 percent year-on-year in March. That was the biggest gain since February 2017 and followed a 1.7 percent rise in February.

via CNBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.