NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Monday that underlying inflation pressures weakened in February.

The bank said its Multivariate Core Trend Inflation gauge fell to 2.9% in February from 3% in January. The bank's index, which seeks to divine the longer-run trend of price pressures, has been on balance cooling since peaking at 5.43% in June 2022.

On Friday, the government reported the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, stood at a year-over-year rise of 2.5% in February, while the core PCE price index was at 2.8% over the same period.