MIT's BPP Monthly Inflation Falls to .10% in June

The Billion Prices Project @ MIT has just been updated with daily price data through June 30, and is reflecting significantly moderating inflationary pressures through last month.  The chart above shows monthly inflation rates over the last year, and inflation for the month ending June 22 hit the lowest rate all year, before turning up slightly towards the end of the month.  

Inflation for the month ending June 22 was only about 0.10% (1.20% at an annual rate), compared to a peak of more than 0.80% earlier this year. For the month ending June 30, inflation was still only about 0.20% (2.40% annually). Unless the recent upward month-end trend continues to accelerate significantly, it would really hard to make a strong case for rising inflationary pressures based on the new BPP daily price data.  The deceleration in monthly inflation from more than 0.80% in February to 0.10% in June makes a stronger case for deflationary pressures than inflationary pressures.   

Update: According to MIT about its methodology on daily prices, "Our data are collected every day from online retailers using a software that scans the underlying code in public webpages and stores the relevant price information in a database. The resulting dataset contains daily prices on the full array of products sold by these retailers. Our data include information on product descriptions, package sizes, brands, special characteristics (e.g. “organic”), and whether the item is on sale or price control."