Crowd Rules Oil and Inflation Are a Drag on Some and a Gift to Others, and the Global Economy Is Told to Check Its Own Sector

The verdict is in. Asked whether rising oil prices and inflation slow global growth, keep it steady or boost it, the crowd chose "Mixed, sector by sector" at 55% consensus. Put plainly, the refinery has a good quarter and the airline does not. A whole field of economics has been saying this for decades, and it has rarely been paid for it.

Second place went to "Growth stays steady" at 20% consensus. That's the optimist's ticket, the view that the global economy can take a fuel bill on the chin and carry on. It came close, which is roughly how the optimists' quarterly reviews usually go.

It's also a reversal. When trading opened less than a day ago, my colleague Rex Ledger reported that the crowd was betting growth would keep its composure. Within hours, composure had given way to nuance. Some sentiment shifts take a full business cycle. This one took about as long as a lunch break.

The rest of the ballot, 2 other sides, ended up as footnotes. Backers of a clean slowdown story and backers of an oil-fuelled boom both found the crowd unwilling to give them a one-line headline. Markets like a tidy narrative, and this time the crowd declined to provide one.

The figures: 22 unique traders put $36,349 behind their opinions on Morfi, where opinion markets let people back their views with money instead of adjectives. If you think the sectors should stop arguing and pick a direction, you can join the market and say so. Bring your own price index.