US PCE Price Index (Aug YY) 3.4% vs. Exp. 3.7% (Prev. 3.4%)

What matters for the rates complex is the split between headline and core: the core measure is the one the Fed anchors to, and episodes where headline undershoots while core holds have historically produced shallow front-end rallies that fade, while a core miss of this size has more durably repriced the near-term path. The usual sequence is an initial bull-steepening as the market leans toward the next cut, followed by a reassessment once the month-on-month detail and the income and spending components are digested, since those feed directly into the Fed's own inflation accounting. The follow-ons are the release's own internals, any revision to the prior month, and the commentary from Fed officials in the days after, which in past episodes has decided whether a soft print gets absorbed into the consensus or dismissed as noise. The calendar effect is real: a miss of this kind raises the weight placed on the next labour report as the tiebreaker.