Inflation Explained: What the Numbers in Turbobulls Mean

The One Question

Inflation never changes how many euros you have. It changes what they buy. So every figure here compares two things today: what the same things cost now, and what your money is now.

An example. A loaf of bread cost EUR 1 on Mar 1 and costs EUR 1.10 today: prices rose 10%. On Mar 1 you had EUR 100, EUR 40 in cash and EUR 60 invested, and your investments have grown 20% since.

Short means prices outran that money. Left over means the money beat them. The prices come from an official price index: each month, a country's statistics office prices the same basket of everyday goods and services.

Every Figure at a Glance

The Net Worth Chart: Hover a Past Date

On the Overview, turn on In today's money above the net worth chart, then hover over (or tap) a past date. Net worth is the cash in your accounts, plus your investments at market value, plus cash at your brokers, minus what you owe. Broker cash counts with Investments on Full tracking, the default, not with Performance only.

Say that date's net worth was EUR 100,000, and prices have risen 12.4% since:

If your net worth today is above that, it grew faster than prices since that date. Below it, prices outran it.

Good to know

• The In today's money chip adds this row to the hover and draws it for every date as a dotted line. It starts off. The line sits above your net worth whenever prices rose: that gap is normal, not a score.
• On the chart's last date the two lines meet.
• For a range that ended in the past, it counts to the range's last day rather than to today.
• With Full tracking, moving money from a bank account to a broker changes nothing: it is cash either way.
• Your net worth on the chart's last date, less the line's value on its first date, is the After inflation change beside the chart.

"After Inflation" Beside the Change for a Date Range

Pick a period on the Overview and the net worth card shows the change twice. Say your net worth went from EUR 100,000 to EUR 130,000 while prices rose 12.4%:

• +EUR 30,000 under Change is the plain change.
• After inflation, +EUR 17,600: to stand still, EUR 100,000 needed to become EUR 112,400, and you ended EUR 17,600 above that (17,600 / 112,400 = 15.66%).

It includes money you saved, not only investment gains, as Year to date does, and it needs a range of at least 28 days.

Wallet: Cash Lost to Inflation

Under Cash in your accounts, a line such as "EUR 498 lost to inflation since Jan 2025" adds up, day by day, what rising prices took from the cash in your wallet accounts while it was there. Cash at brokers is not in it.

Say you held EUR 10,000 from January 2025 and added EUR 5,000 later. Prices rose 2% before the EUR 5,000 arrived, and 4% in all. The info icon beside the line shows:

Not 4% of EUR 15,000 (EUR 600): the first EUR 10,000 lost the full 4% (EUR 400), the later EUR 5,000 only the rise after it arrived (EUR 98).

Good to know

• Days below zero count as nothing. If prices fell, it reads "gained from falling prices".
• With the period on All, it starts on the first day your accounts held cash.
• Category, tag, type, amount and search filters hide it, since they leave only part of your money.
• Interest your account paid is not subtracted: compare it with this figure to see whether a savings account kept up.
• Holding some cash is often deliberate: this is the price of an emergency buffer. Cash runway puts it in context.

Portfolio: Did Your Investments Beat Inflation?

Investments can grow faster or slower than prices, so the question is whether they kept up. On this page, a deposit is money going into your investments (a purchase), and a withdrawal is money coming out (a sale, or a dividend paid to you).

TWR after inflation (Performance section, the Performance chart): how much your investments grew your buying power, whatever the timing of your deposits. TWR +20.0% with prices up 12.4% gives (1 + 20.0%) / (1 + 12.4%) - 1 = +6.8%, not 7.6%: EUR 120 at the new prices buys what EUR 106.76 bought before. Its chart adds a dotted line, such as "Euro area inflation", over the same stretches TWR counts.

On Turbo Pro, Time-weighted, Money-weighted, in all and Money-weighted, a year under that chart each carry their figure after inflation.

MWR and Annualized MWR after inflation: did your actual money beat inflation, given when you put it in and took it out? Each deposit and withdrawal is carried forward by inflation from its own day. EUR 10,000 invested once, worth EUR 12,000 two years later, with prices up 8%:

The EUR 10,000 needed to become EUR 10,800, and EUR 12,000 is 11.1% more. The Inflation row in the figure's info popover is that hurdle: the return that would only have kept up with prices, on the same deposits and withdrawals.

What you put in, after inflation (the Value chart): what your investments would need to be worth just to keep up. It is the money you put in, less the money you took out, each carried forward by inflation from its own day. EUR 10,000 two years ago and EUR 5,000 one year ago, with prices up 3% a year, needed EUR 10,609 + EUR 5,150 = EUR 15,759. At a value of EUR 17,000, hovering that day shows this line at EUR 15,759: your investments are EUR 1,241 ahead of inflation. Once you have taken out more than you put in, after inflation, the line drops below zero.

Good to know

• Each "Inflation" row covers the stretches its own money lived through: TWR skips stretches with nothing invested, and MWR weighs most the times when more of your money was in.
• TWR after inflation above zero with MWR after inflation below it means your investments beat inflation, but more of your money was in during the weaker stretches.
• The money-weighted "Inflation" row can be missing: some mixes of money in and out have no single answer, and once you have taken out more than you put in, there is nothing left to beat.
• With a date range, the portfolio's value at the start counts as money put in. Dividends and profitable sales lower the line, so it can sit below What you paid. That is normal.
• ROI on what you hold, ROI on all money put in and Open lots in profit have no after-inflation version: they compare each position with what you paid for it.

Choosing the Index

The Inflation control sits next to the period on the Overview, on the Value and Performance charts in the Portfolio's Performance section, and on the Wallet chart's Balance tab. Its panel, "Compare with inflation", lists the indexes for your display currency, with one marked Suggested. It is on by default and one setting for every page: None turns it off everywhere. The inflation figures are part of Turbo Pro, and of every trial. On the other plans the control shows a PRO label, and clicking it shows the plans.

The index follows your display currency, not where you live: euro figures are measured against euro prices, since another currency's inflation would count exchange-rate moves as inflation.

If you live in Spain and view in euros, you can pick Spain instead of the euro area average. Other display currencies have no inflation figures.

Where the Data Comes From

The figures use official monthly consumer price indexes: HICP from Eurostat (the euro area, each EU country, Norway, Switzerland and Türkiye), CPI from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and CPI from the UK Office for National Statistics. Turbobulls pins each month's figure to the middle of its month and moves in small equal steps between them. The monthly index is official; every daily value and after-inflation figure is our own calculation.

Each popover names the index and its latest month in one grey line, for example "Euro area prices (Eurostat), up to Aug 2026." At the bottom of the Inflation control's panel, a Sources and licences link opens this section. Here is the notice each source asks for:

• Source: Eurostat, HICP (prc_hicp_minr). Daily values and real returns are calculated by Turbobulls. Eurostat bears no responsibility for these calculations. doi.org/10.2908/PRC_HICP_MINR
• Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U all items, not seasonally adjusted (CUUR0000SA0). Daily values and real returns are calculated by Turbobulls from these data. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.
• Source: Office for National Statistics, CPI index D7BT. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Daily values and real returns are calculated by Turbobulls.

The latest weeks are estimated. A month's figure is published some weeks after the month ends. Until then, Turbobulls estimates from the past year's rate, and the popover adds "Later days are estimated." The real figure replaces the estimate when it arrives. If none arrives, the estimate stops about three months after the middle of the latest published month, and the figures show as not available.

When a Figure Says "Not Available"

On the Wallet, the line under Cash in your accounts reads "Lost to inflation: not available". On the Portfolio, a tile reads "After inflation: not available". The info icon beside it says why. On the Overview, the figures simply do not appear.

The Math, in One Table

Every figure starts from the price factor: the index at the end of the range divided by the index on an earlier day. Prices up 12.4% give a factor of 1.124.

Common Questions

Q: Prices rose 12.4%, so why does my old money buy only 11% less?

The Full Picture: Pair These With the Inflation Figures

Turbobulls is a tracking and analytics tool, not an investment adviser. Nothing here is investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Do your own research or consult a licensed professional.

On Turbo Pro, the inflation figures appear on your Overview, Wallet and Portfolio whenever your display currency has an index. See yours →