Everyone hold your breath: The next BIG inflation number will be July's CPI (Thu). It could be troublesome for bonds and stocks. That's if the Cleveland Fed's Inflation Nowcasting is on track. It is updated each business day. On August 4, it projected that the headline and core CPI inflation rates will both be up 0.4% m/m. The comparable y/y inflation rates are 3.4% and 4.8%. Those numbers compare to 3.0% and 4.8% in June.
The financial markets would not welcome those numbers the way they did June's lower-than-expected results. Lots of commentators would opine that inflation may no longer be moderating, but may be turning "sticky."
But wait: Truflation, a private-sector venture, also tracks the CPI on a daily basis. Their data show that the CPI on a y/y basis ranged between 2.1% and 2.6% during July. The markets would greet those numbers with joy.
We don't follow millions of prices daily as claimed by the above tracking models. Here are three of the relevant prices we watch:
