The vocabulary a reader meets on this site and in every CPI story — each term defined in two sentences, with the page that shows it. Third-party names (Cleveland Fed, Kalshi) are defined as their owners use them; the longer site guide is on the guide page.
A nowcast is an estimate of a statistic for the current period before the official release — for inflation, an estimate of this month's CPI while the month is still under way. Nowflation publishes two distinct things: the Gauge, a daily measurement of prices, and a pre-registered forecast of the next CPI print that is graded after the release. See the CPI forecast page: forecast.
Core services excluding housing — dining out, medical care, recreation, education and the other services priced mostly on labor — the slice the Federal Reserve watches for wage-driven, self-sustaining inflation. On this site it is computed from the official service subindexes with the BLS weights renormalized, so it steps with every CPI print. See the supercore page: supercore.
OER is the CPI's measure of housing costs for homeowners: what an owner would pay to rent their own home, imputed from the rents of comparable rental units in the BLS rent panel rather than from mortgage payments or house prices. It is the single largest CPI component, which is why the rent panel's six-month repricing cycle matters so much for headline inflation. See the rent inflation page: rent-inflation.
Nowflation's shelter measure: new-lease rents from Zillow and Apartment List averaged over the trailing three years with weights that decay at the lease-turnover rate, so it reflects what the whole renting population pays this month rather than only the marginal tenant signing a lease. It is used in the Gauge as measured; its lead over the official rent index is tested separately. See the rent inflation page: rent-inflation.
The year-over-year inflation rate compares this month's price level with the same month a year ago, so an unusually high or low month twelve months back mechanically pushes the annual rate down or up as it drops out of the comparison, regardless of what prices are doing now. The seasonally adjusted one- and three-month annualized pace strips the base out and shows the current run rate. See the current inflation rate page: inflation-rate.
Underlying-inflation measures from the Cleveland Fed (median CPI, 16% trimmed-mean CPI) and Dallas Fed (trimmed-mean PCE) that drop the components with the largest price moves each month and average the rest, filtering out one-off spikes such as eggs or airfares. They are shown next to headline and core on the every-measure table. See the Gauge-vs-BLS table: vs-bls.
The gap between the yield on a nominal Treasury and an inflation-protected Treasury (TIPS) of the same maturity — the average inflation rate at which the two pay the same, and so the market's priced expectation. The 5-year, 10-year and 5-year/5-year-forward breakevens are charted daily against the survey measures. See the inflation expectations page: expectations.
A vintage is a statistic exactly as it stood on a given date, before later revisions; a vintage-true backtest uses only the data that existed the day before each release, so it cannot borrow information from the future. Nowflation stores its own history vintage-true and never silently revises a published value. See the revision tracker: revisions.
Seasonal adjustment removes the regular calendar pattern (holiday sales, summer gasoline, January price resets) so month-to-month changes can be compared; BLS quotes the monthly change on the SA index and the year-over-year rate on the NSA index, where seasonality cancels. Nowflation follows the same convention, and its pace figures use the BLS gasoline factors. See the current inflation rate page: inflation-rate.
A forecast written to the public record before the outcome is known — here, sealed the evening before each CPI release with a dated receipt and a SHA-256 hash — so it can be graded honestly and never edited after the fact. Every Nowflation Forecast is pre-registered and graded on the scoreboard next to the Cleveland Fed, the Street and Kalshi. See the CPI forecast page: forecast.
The CPI excluding food and energy, the two most volatile groups, which gives a steadier read on the underlying trend; the Fed's target is stated on the core PCE price index, a related BEA measure. Core is not "inflation without the things you buy" — it is a filter for what tends to persist. See the current inflation rate page: inflation-rate.
The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, a narrower population than the headline CPI-U; the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment is set from its July–September average. The two indexes move almost identically month to month, which is what makes the COLA projectable from a CPI forecast. See the COLA estimate page: cola.
The difference between the Nowflation Gauge and the latest official CPI print, in percentage points. It comes mostly from shelter timing — market rents measured this month versus a survey that reprices each unit every six months — and it changes sign with the rent cycle. See the Why the Gap page: gap.
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