Prices barely moved in November but still held higher than the Federal Reserve’s target when looked at from a year ago, according to a Commerce Department measure released Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, showed an increase of just 0.1% from October. The measure indicated a 2.4% inflation rate on an annual basis, still ahead of the Fed’s 2% goal but lower than the 2.5% estimate from Dow Jones. The monthly reading also was 0.1 percentage point below the forecast.

Excluding food and energy, core PCE also increased 0.1% monthly and was 2.8% higher from a year ago, with both readings also being 0.1 percentage point below the forecast. Fed officials generally consider the core reading to be a better gauge of long-run inflation trends as it excludes the volatile gas and groceries category.

The annual core inflation reading was the same as in October while the headline rate rose 0.1 percentage point.

The readings reflected little increase in goods prices and a 0.2% rise in services prices. Food and energy prices both posted 0.2% gains as well. On a 12-month basis, goods prices have fallen 0.4% but services have risen 3.8%. Food prices were up 1.4% while energy fell 4%.

Housing inflation, one of the stickier components of inflation during his economic cycle, showed signs of cooling in November, rising just 0.2%.

Income and spending numbers in the release also were a bit light compared to expectations.

Personal income rose 0.3% after having jumped 0.7% in October, falling short of the 0.4% estimate. On spending, personal expenditures increased 0.4%, one-tenth of a percentage point below the forecast.

The personal saving rate edged lower to 4.4%.

Stock market futures held in negative territory after the report while Treasury yields also slumped.

The report comes just two days after the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate another quarter percentage point to a target range of 4.25%-4.5%, the lowest in two years. However, Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues reduced their expected path in 2025, now penciling in just two cuts compared to four indicated in September.

Though Powell said Wednesday that inflation has “moved much closer” to the Fed’s goal, he said the changes in the projected path for rate cuts reflects “the expectation inflation will be higher” in the year ahead.

“It’s kind of common sense thinking that when the path is uncertain you go a little bit slower,” Powell said. “It’s not unlike driving on a foggy night or walking into a dark room full of furniture. You just slow down.”

Russia’s central bank on Friday unexpectedly left its key interest rates unchanged at 21%, citing improved monetary tightness that had created the conditions to tame sky-high inflation.

“Monetary conditions tightened more significantly than envisaged by the October key rate decision,” the bank said, noting factors “autonomous” from its monetary policy.

“Given the notable increase in interest rates for borrowers and the cooling of credit activity, the achieved tightness of monetary conditions creates the necessary prerequisites for resuming disinflation processes and returning inflation to the target, despite the elevated current price growth and high domestic demand,” it added.

Markets had widely expected the central bank to hike interest rates by another 200 basis on Friday, after taking such a step in October amid an ongoing effort to subdue inflation stoked by the military costs of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and by Western sanctions against its key commodity exports.

The bank on Friday said it would assess the need for a key rate increase at its upcoming meeting in February. It currently forecasts annual inflation will decline to 4% in 2026 and remain at this target in the forward horizon.

Russia’s consumer price index is currently more than twice this rate — annual inflation hit 9.5% as of Dec. 16, the bank said Friday, noting persisting pressures, especially in the household and business sectors. The consumer price index hit 8.9% in November on an annual basis, up from 8.5% in October. The increase was largely driven by rising food prices, with the cost of milk and dairy products soaring this year.

The hold to interest rates comes even after Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted during his Thursday annual Q&A session with Russian citizens that the nation’s inflation was problematic and that there was evidence of the economy overheating. He nevertheless stressed that Russia could still achieve 3.9%-4% of economic growth this year.

“Of course, inflation is such an alarming signal. Just yesterday, when I was preparing for today’s event, I spoke with the chairperson of the Central Bank, Elvira [Nabiullina] who told me that it was already somewhere around 9.3%. But wages have grown by 9% in real terms, I want to emphasize this — in real terms minus inflation — and the disposable income of the population has also grown,” he said, according to comments reported by Interfax and translated by Google.

The International Monetary Fund predicts Russia will notch 3.6% growth this year, before a deceleration to 1.3% growth in 2025.

The “sharp slowdown,” the IMF said, was envisaged “as private consumption and investment slow amid reduced tightness in the labor market and slower wage growth.”

“What we are seeing right now in the Russian economy, [is] that it is pushing against capacity constraint,” Alfred Kammer, director of the European Department at the IMF, said when the fund released its latest economic outlook in October.

“So we have a positive output gap, or you could put it differently — the Russian economy is overheating. What we are expecting for next year is simply also the impact that going over your supply capacity, you cannot maintain for very long. So we see an impact on moving into more normal territory there. And of course, that is supported by a tight monetary policy by the Central Bank of Russia,” he said.

“A tight monetary policy, in order to bring down inflation, slows down aggregate demand, and in 2025 will have these effects on GDP. That’s why we are seeing the slowdown in 2025,” Kammer added.