Needless to say, macro watchers — which is very often a polite euphemism for economists, both real and armchair, as distinct from professional traders — were focused obsessively on the US economic right-tail Wednesday.

Inflation data out of the BLS painted a very concerning picture, where that means underlying price growth overshot by a mile on the “regular” core CPI gauge and by a country mile on two make-believe “supercore” measures which attempt to extract, from the CPI tables, a temperature check on services price growth excluding shelter akin to the PCE-derived version the Fed monitors.

The update rounded out a constellation of figures which, taken together, ostensibly suggest the most likely 2025 scenario for the world’s largest economy is “no landing.” As a quick reminder, the January installment of BofA’s Global Fund manager survey found subjective “no landing” odds hitting a record.

By contrast, “hard landing” probabilities (and again, we’re talking about subjective probabilities here) meandered near a record low.

But if you ask Nomura’s Charlie McElligott, the macro community might be exhibiting “zeitgeist overshoot” (if you will) when it comes to “no landing” / right-tail buy-in, and as he noted on Wednesday, professional traders are fading it.

“Hedgers are exhibiting a far greater concern for what I’d generally consider to be more ‘left-tail’ market or economic outcomes where rates gap lower and USTs rally on what could be a US economic growth scare led by labor cooling which cracks consumption [and serves as] a proper risk-off catalyst, or perhaps another negative market scenario” where a hawkish Fed ends up fighting the last war again, Charlie said Wednesday.

He warned that in terms of event risk, March 14 looms large as the next possible government shutdown D-day. Republicans in Congress will do whatever Trump says (let me emphasize: Whatever Trump says), but that doesn’t mean markets won’t be subjected to the usual brinksmanship and any attendant volatility. In December, Elon Musk tried to force a shutdown over Christmas, and although Democrats — soft-hearted saps that they are — would certainly rather not put Americans through it, they’d risk it if it means creating bad optics for this White House.

McElligott went on to mention what he described as an “increasing likelihood for growth drags” from Trump’s initial policy blitz, drags which could manifest on a lag “as we push further into the year.” Remember: For all his determination to run the economy hot, Trump’s piling tariffs, deportations and government spending cuts on top of a Fed funds rate which, even after 100bps of cuts since September, still counts as “high” in the post-GFC context. Hence Trump’s “gentle” suggestion that Powell get with the program.

Finally — and I mentioned this early Wednesday in the CPI coverage — these Q1, and particularly January, US macro readouts are starting to seem unreliable, where that means they tend to overstate reflation momentum, setting the stage for what, relative to Q1 overshoots, looks like a letdown in Q2, with the effect of making a hawkish Fed appear behind the curve.

As Charlie put it, there’s some nascent downshift shock risk “off the potentials for yet another post-COVID distortion phenomenon [as] the new seasonality of ‘hot’ Q1 data then turns into a growth scare at some point thereafter in Q2/Q3 [on] data give-backs” and downward revisions.