Inflation in Europe was “stable” this month and the bloc’s economy managed a respectable growth outcome for Q1, preliminary data released on Tuesday showed.

At 2.4%, the 12-month rate of headline price growth was unchanged from March, as energy prices moderated at a slower pace and food inflation picked up.

The bloc-wide figures came on the heels of unwelcome inflation upticks in both Germany and Spain, where energy costs are biting again as government support measures roll off.

Note that headline price growth was running 7% in Europe this time last year.

The simple figure above gives you some context for the rapidity of the surge (exacerbated, obviously, by the war in Ukraine) and subsequent decline, which now finds the annual rate close enough to target for the ECB to begin dialing back the most aggressive rate hikes in the short history of the institution.

As ever, you’re encouraged to remember that falling inflation isn’t deflation. The scope and pace of the drop looks impressive in Europe, but as long as annual price growth’s not negative, consumers are still paying more than they were a year ago. This is a cumulative process and it’s highly distressing for lower-income households.

In a small break for policymakers, the YoY pace of services inflation receded to 3.7% this month, the slowest since July of 2022.

Core price growth was 2.7%, a touch above consensus but the slowest since Russian invaded its neighbor all the same.

Obviously, services inflation’s still too high and although nothing in Tuesday’s flash estimate from Eurostat will derail the ECB’s plans to cautiously manage rates down from the peak, the combination of the persistent overshoot on the core gauge and a better-than-expected growth outcome may delay the first cut by a month. Or else give traders pause when it comes to how many cuts are priced for 2024.

The bloc’s economy expanded 0.3% last quarter, the best outcome since Q3 2022. Among the majors, growth was strongest in Spain and Italy.

As the figure shows, this is a constructive development. Europe spent the last five quarters wandering aimlessly through an intractable “slow-cession.” It’s good to see growth pick up.

That said, there’s an argument to be made that suddenly better growth outcomes, when paired with above-target underlying price growth and still-hot services inflation, could prompt the ECB to reconsider whether rate cuts are actually urgent.

“With GDP growth faster than expected today, domestic demand is showing signs of recovery, which could make inflation more stubborn,” ING remarked. “Then again, a weak business survey for April showed that services inflation is expected to continue to moderate in the coming months,” the same note added.

Who knows, right? I gotta be honest with you, folks: This is an exercise in futility. Abject futility. These are preliminary figures and if you’ve spent any time with Eurostat’s GDP data, you know it’s going to be revised by a tenth or two here, a tenth or two there, a tenth or two everywhere. As for the inflation update, we don’t know anything today that we didn’t know last week if everyone’s honest.

As noted late Monday in “Parlor Game,” trading these numbers is just gambling on policy. Nobody pushing around the euro on Tuesday or “refining” rate-cut expectations is trading based on a measured, rational assessment of the macro updates. And even if they were, the numbers are so convoluted as to be largely meaningless. The bloc-wide growth aggregate in Europe is a roll-up of nearly two-dozen economies and the regional inflation numbers are a hopeless mishmash of national methodologies and the “harmonized” calculations, distorted by base effects tied to government energy subsidies.

If you think you learn anything from these releases, you’re kidding yourself. And if you think you can learn anything about the releases from the price action across “efficient” markets, the joke’s even funnier.