Truflation is a free decentralized service that tracks inflation. You can access it here.
Unlike CPI or PCE the tool uses real-time access to accurate, unbiased economic data. Each piece of data, from inflation rates to asset valuations, is derived from credible sources, rigorously verified, and made publicly available to improve relevance and timeliness. CPI and PCE are the most widely used inflation indexes, but they suffer from several drawbacks, most notably the significant lag in the data and the limited number of data points.
Truflation combines real time data from many trusted sources such as Zillow, CarGuru, OPIS ETC.
With more than 30 licensed data providers supplying over 13 million census-level data points, Truflation’s US CPI index is reported daily and is 30 times faster than traditional metrics. In contrast, the BLS data is sourced using monthly surveys.
You can find more on how the data is collected and collated here.
Personally, I find this data to be a helpful leading indicator. It helps me to visualise where the market is heading. I wouldn’t rely too much on the actual numbers as they do carry out regular updates on the data set which can skew things. But for a more broad-based trend view I find it to be a very essential tool.
Furthermore, if you scroll down a little to below the main chart you can dig down into the data that contributes to the inflation rate. It’s broken down into 12 main categories that include items such as housing and utilities and transport. In each of those sections there are further subcategories that you can remove to clear up the charts.
Below the chart for each of these items you can also find their Relative Importance, this refers to the percentage of influence that a specific factor has on the overall inflation data.
