On Friday, we got the December inflation data in Japan (for the entire country). We can now compare recent trends in core inflation across major countries and the CEE region. Figure 1 shows a simultaneous comparison of annual dynamics and for the last 3 months (annualized rate).
On a 3-month basis, China, the Eurozone and the Czech Republic are on the verge of deflation.
On a 3-month basis, core inflation in Poland was below 2% only in one month (September), and in Hungary only for 2 months and now returned above 2% threshold.
In the US, core inflation is still relatively high. In Japan, on a 3-month basis, we dropped below 2%.

In Japan, we get the inflation from the Tokyo region much earlier in the month, which has a very high correlation with inflation in the entire country (Figure 2).

The monthly change in core inflation in Japan is also interesting (Figure 3)... there was virtually no monthly inflation in November and December. The high monthly change from October will drop out from the calculations of 3-month inflation in the next month.

The Bank of Japan meeting will take place next Tuesday + the release of its latest Outlook Report containing board members' median forecasts for real GDP and core CPI.
The upcoming meeting is unlikely to involve any policy change, but there could be some interesting downgrading of inflation outlook for FY24 to the mid-2% range.
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