This will be based on official INDEC data, based on the Year-over-Year inflation from Dec 2024 compared to Dec 2023. This will presumably be reported in the report released in Jan 2025.
For reference, this is the latest report as of this writing:
https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/ipc_11_231B28D924C4.pdf
This question will not resolve Yes early.
It will resolve No early if the following conditions are met:
Inflation YTD exceeds 30% as of a given month, as does total YTD as of resolve time.
The inflation in the following month (after breaking 30% YTD) is positive.
The market has been consistently trading at or above 97% for at least a week.
In my judgment there are no weird shenanigans going on and this early-resolve criteria still looks reasonable. If there are weird inflation / deflation things going on I'll bias toward waiting.
Hopefully that allows a good mix of adequate patience and resolving correctly, while also allowing an early resolution if the result is clear in advance.
1,000
1.00Hi @EvanDaniel I think this market is ready to resolve "No":
January: 20.6%
https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/ipc_02_24DC34E376E0.pdf
February: 13.2%
https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/ipc_03_24BF7A335103.pdf
March: 11.0%
https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/ipc_04_24D278E3E48E.pdf
First three months adding: 44.8%
@MartinJonas I agree. The early-resolve criteria look on track. I originally said I'd give it week trading at 97% (meant to be 3%). In retrospect that seems a little too long, but changing that now seems a little weird. I'll give it a couple more days and then resolve. (Assuming there are no arguments / evidence posted until then that make this look like a bad plan.)
Thanks for the reminder!
I made another version of this question with more options! Non-INDEC options to be added as well, pending my figuring out a good alternate source or someone suggesting one. @TaoBurga You might be interested :)
/EvanDaniel/will-inflation-in-argentina-for-202
30% seems clearly too low for me. Current inflation is at ~150%. President Milei and economy minister Caputo say they expect inflation to be higher for 12-18 months before lowering again. Economist José Luis Espert tweeted that Argentina is at roughly 1% inflation daily. Milei has also so far not given a timeline for dollarization, and the market for that seems to have low confidence that it'll happen. Anecdotally, most people in Argentina agree that there is a high risk of hyperinflation in 2024.
I'll also say that I agree with other commenters: The INDEC as a source doesn't seem like the best idea because of possible government shenanigans.
@TaoBurga To be clear, the "other commenters" expressing concern about INDEC are me, the market creator :) Do you have a good alternative to suggest? This market will continue to be about INDEC data, but I think running another market alongside it might be valuable.
If I were to make a market for 2024 inflation that might trade near 50%, what target should I use?
@EvanDaniel Ah thank you Evan. I’m still getting used to the platform.
To answer your last question: I honestly can’t say because things are developing so quickly that my answer could be drastically different in a month. I have a huge confidence interval.
With low confidence: I would probably be indifferent between YES and NO at inflation ~75%. The problem is that there is a real chance of hyperinflation soon (my personal P~20%) or otherwise higher inflation than any month Jan-Nov 2023, and then also a real chance that inflation gets under control during the third or fourth quarters. So I expect we’ll know the resolution to the question earlier than Q3 2024 but I’m not very confident in this.
@TaoBurga So we should have a couple questions, spanning a wide possible range? I could write that set.
Do you have sources other than INDEC I should look at? Or should we just go with that, possible flaws and all, because it's well defined?
@FlavioCaldaNovak good question! Annualized inflation: definitely not, would keep waiting to hit 30% total during the year. Total: might still recover with some deflation. I'd like to find a way to resolve early in that case, but balanced with not resolving prematurely. Suggestions welcome.
Maybe something like if total YTD exceeds 40%, AND trading on this market is consistently high (97%+ for a week?), it resolves early. Some variant of that?
Advantages of IMF as source: it's independent; less likely to have weird shenanigans (or concerns that they might happen). But I can't figure out what the underlying data is.
TradingEconomics is getting their data from INDEC, the official Argentinian government source. That's a very thorough and detailed source, and is analogous to what we'd be using if this question was about the US.
I'm inclined to just go with INDEC data for this question. We can have another question about data manipulation or other concerns if people are worried about that. Opinions? I'm planning to make a decision very soon.
@EvanDaniel If we use the INDEC data it'll be the data for Dec 2024 YoY inflation, in the report that will presumably be published in Jan 2025.
Latest report can be found here: https://www.indec.gob.ar/uploads/informesdeprensa/ipc_11_231B28D924C4.pdf
@Ernie An excellent question that I'd appreciate help working out edge cases for. My initial reaction:
If we use the CPI data, we can just read it directly without issue; hopefully it is continuous in a useful way. Dollarization would presumably have an impact on the result, but not how we determine it.
If they are using literal dollars and there are no impediments to foreign exchange, then the dollar inflation rate in Argentina is the relevant thing; presumably we're comparing to a different CPI basket so it might or might not exactly match the US inflation rate (though I'd expect it to be similar).
If they have allegedly pegged the Peso to the Dollar, but there are controls on foreign currency exchanges, then I don't think that changes anything -- we use CPI or inflation rate as measured.
Does that sound about right? Suggestions?