Singapore's consumer prices rose 2.2% last month. Economists predicted 2.3%. The difference is one-tenth of one percent. Financial markets reacted to this information as if it meant something.
Somewhere in Singapore, a policy analyst is updating a PowerPoint deck to explain why 2.2% is actually better than 2.3% because it demonstrates "controlled price pressures amid resilient domestic demand." Another analyst three buildings over is preparing slides on why 2.2% is worse than 2.3% because it signals "weakening consumer sentiment and deflationary headwinds." Both will be quoted in tomorrow's papers. Both will sound authoritative. Both are making shit up.
The headline calls this the highest inflation in nearly two years. It also calls it undershooting expectations. So prices are rising faster than they have in 24 months, but not quite as fast as some guy with a Bloomberg terminal thought they would. This is the information retail traders used to adjust their positions today. They sold something. Or bought something. Definitely did something. Felt very smart about it.
The real story here is that economists polled by Reuters cannot predict a number that comes out one month later in a city-state smaller than New York. They had one job. They had decades of data. They had models. They were off by 0.1%.
Tomorrow these same economists will publish forecasts for where the S&P 500 will be in twelve months. People will read those forecasts. People will make investment decisions based on those forecasts. Those people have brokerage accounts and voting rights.
The technical levels don't care that Singapore printed 2.2% instead of 2.3%. Support and resistance existed before this data. They'll exist after. But some day trader in Ohio just panic-sold his Singapore ETF because a Reuters poll was slightly wrong, and that's the funniest f*cking thing you'll read today.
Photo by Zhu Hongzhi on Unsplash
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