CPI inflation preview: to  rise only gradually - Nomura

Analysts at Nomura offered their review in a snapshot of the CPI data event tonight.

Key Quotes:

"Core CPI surprised on the upside in Jan, rising by 0.349% m-o-m, but some of that strength seemed to be attributable to transitory factors. 

Thus, we expect core CPI inflation to return to a more trend-like 0.2% (0.203%) m-o-m gain in Feb (Consensus: 0.2%), which translates into the y-o-y change of 1.9% (1.879%, Consensus: 1.8%), slightly up from 1.8% (1.821%) previously. We view the risk to our core CPI forecast as roughly balanced. 

In the near term, core y-o-y inflation will likely move up by a couple of tenths as the negative impact from a sharp decline in wireless telephone service prices will drop up out of the calculation in March. 

Beyond that, we continue to expect core inflation to rise only gradually. On non-core components, energy prices likely fell slightly by 0.2% m-o-m in Feb, while food prices rose modestly by 0.1% m-o-m. Our forecast for CPI NSA is 249.024 (Consensus: 248.929)."