US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

It bears repeating because this is a common mistake in inflation discussions: a decrease in inflation metrics means price increases are slowing down, it doesn’t mean that prices are going down （that would require a negative CPI print).<p>Also, this number is year over year, so the decrease just means the price increases between Oct 21 and Oct 22 are not as steep as between Sept 21 to Sept 22, which is not hard to achieve because Sept 21 to Oct 21 had a bigger month over month jump.<p>The right way to interpret this number is that high prices have plateaued a bit. Yes that means your groceries are going to be x% higher than in 2020. Short of deflation, they always will be.

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic&#x2F;house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

MoM inflation is still unfortunately 0.4% which is about 5% annualized. I think it&#x27;s unfortunate that reporting focuses around yearly inflation which isn&#x27;t really useful for talking about inflation in the moment.

Reminds me of Nixon&#x27;s &quot;the rate of increase of inflation is going down&quot; comment and the associated quip that it was &quot;the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.&quot;

Funny how markets and analysts lose their minds when the numbers don&#x27;t match exactly the predicted when there are no error bars associated to either the estimate or the value. Coming under or over is a lot different when we&#x27;re talking +&#x2F;- 0.05 vs. 0.5...<p>And yes, I tried checking. The Fed does put out their data, but nary a precision factor to be found

The US has it easy, since the inflation was largely caused by lockdown stimulus, and also benefits from being the global reserve currency so it can leverage cheap imports as the interest rate rises increase the value of USD.<p>I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if it&#x27;s better in a few months, especially with the growing protectionism in the anti-inflation act, etc. and acts against Chinese competition, etc. keeping more industry in the US.

In many European countries inflation is at 15%<p>If it reaches 20% that means every 3.5 years your cash reserve loses half its value<p>Mean someone correct me if I’m wrong I think that is astounding

Why is this causing USD&#x2F;EUR exchange rate to fall? And in general USD to lose value compared to other currencies.<p>My guess is that expectation of higher inflation was combined with expectation of further interest rate increases to combat it. Interest rate increases generally make currency more attractive for investments from abroad, which increases exchange rate.<p>This expectation was &quot;priced in&quot; current exchanged rates and now the market has corrected.

It&#x27;s a bit higher in Denmark and I have a little too much stored as fiat in the bank. What is a safe asset to store value while inflation is &gt;10% in a developed country?

Several commenters have provided various reasons year-over-year numbers are, to put it mildly, difficult to interpret.<p>Another reason is that a major war in Europe started within this year, adding to the difficulty of Y0Y comparisons. The principal weapon deployed against the aggressor is economic warfare to collapse Russia&#x27;s economy. That has only recently made an impact that can&#x27;t be denied in Russia.<p>Meanwhile, the war has directly cut food exports from Ukraine and both directly and indirectly disrupted food and fossil fuel markets in many regions, mostly toward higher costs and trade substitutions that also mostly lead to higher costs.<p>Interest rate rises are probably needed but the causes of inflation are mostly outside central bankers&#x27; control.

Seems like these days there are more people who want the economy to fail just to be able to make a point about the political party they support.<p>I&#x27;m personally ecstatic that inflation seems to be softening. It&#x27;s likely that there will be another couple interest rate hikes regardless, but there does seem to be a &quot;back to normal&quot; in the (distant) horizon somewhere.

Isolated data points aren&#x27;t really worth analyzing - something like a running 6-month average makes more sense. See this 2009 blog post on how to inflation-adjust current prices&#x2F;revenues to those from decades before:<p>&gt; &quot;For this exercise, we’ll use the annual average CPI-U values for 1973 (44.4) and 2008 (215.303). Because the CPI-U includes relatively volatile items such as food and fuel, I tend to avoid the monthly values with their fluctuations. If you want to adjust to the most recent data available, consider averaging the most recent six months of CPI-U values.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anthonydebarros.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;11&#x2F;01&#x2F;adjusting-for-inflation-guide&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anthonydebarros.com&#x2F;2009&#x2F;11&#x2F;01&#x2F;adjusting-for-inflati...</a><p>This is similar to analyzing climate trends, where you really want to look at 5-year running averages (possibly 10-year). Generally, &#x27;response time of the system to forcing&#x27; is what matters, in both cases.

Looking at the macro picture is so misleading. The only categories that are really down are natural gas, used cars &amp; trucks, and apparel. Everything else is up but it is being masked by the huge drop in natural gas prices (which is due to the situation in Europe).

Finally the mania is slowing down. It seems the rate hikes and layoffs are working.

Inflation in and of itself isn&#x27;t the problem per se. It&#x27;s income(s) being able to keep pace, or more often than not keep pace.<p>Working citizens - as well as those on public assistance? - have been losing ground to inflation for decades.<p>The bottom line: In the eyes of bread winners this is old news, and does nothing (again) to mitigate their discomfort and pain. From a sociopolitical POV this is not sustainable.

I was just reading <i>&quot;Ray Dalio on the Downturn: &#x27;There&#x27;s a Lot More to Come&#x27;&quot;</i>[1], which said:<p><i>Inflation in the United States has risen 8.2 percent in the past 12 months. While the Federal Reserve’s long-term inflation target is 2 percent, Dalio predicted that the central bank will go for a more realistic target of around 4.5 to 5 percent.<p>Based on those numbers, he believes the real interest rate could land in between 4.5 percent and 6 percent. “Six starts to break things pretty bad,” Dalio said. “The vicinity of 4.5 and 6 may be the number in terms of cracking the thing.”</i><p>[1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.institutionalinvestor.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;b20hpgzhxph5h5&#x2F;Ray-Dalio-on-the-Downturn-There-s-a-Lot-More-to-Come" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.institutionalinvestor.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;b20hpgzhxph5h5...</a>

So a mere 0,2% delta led to a 6,4% increase in the Nasdaq. I really can&#x27;t understand...

So how much of this is due to lower than normal heating costs last month?<p>Utility (piped) gas service -4.6%<p>I used the A&#x2F;C more than heat last month since temps have been quite a bit higher than normal. Just using A&#x2F;C in October is pretty abnormal for me.

Anyone know of a publicly available data of grocery prices for staple products month over month? I really wish I would have saved my grocery receipts over the past five years. Rather than rely on my perceptions.

Inflation was 0.4% month-over-month. This is the same rate we saw las month.

What&#x27;s sad is that prices will never be where they were ever. I keep getting slammed by family members telling me to &quot;make sure you vote&quot; cause they feel that it&#x27;s all a single party&#x27;s fault that we are in this mess and only the other party can fix it, when sadly, it&#x27;s the world we live in now. Houses will always be insanely priced now and making 100K is like make 50K.

It&#x27;s not &quot;Inflation&quot;. It&#x27;s straight up wage theft by the rich. They&#x27;re jacking up prices and blaming (hand-wave) Inflation to extract more profit. And no, workers wages being bumped up to $15&#x2F;hr is no excuse. Look no further than the profits.<p>------------------<p>&quot;Workers around the world: lost $3.7 trillion in the pandemic Billionaires around the world: gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic<p>It&#x27;s the biggest one-year wealth transfer in history, yet somehow barely anyone is talking about it.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;danpriceseattle&#x2F;status&#x2F;1375189204125114371?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;danpriceseattle&#x2F;status&#x2F;13751892041251143...</a><p>------------------<p>Iron Mountain CEO says he&#x27;s been &#x27;praying for inflation&#x27; because it means he can raise prices<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;ceo-praying-for-inflation-raise-prices-boosts-profits-interest-rates-2022-9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;ceo-praying-for-inflation-ra...</a><p>------------------<p>Leading grocery chains such as Kroger (KR) and Alberstons have said in recent days that they expect to benefit from rising prices. Sales boomed at these chains and other grocers during the early stages of the pandemic, but have slowed down in recent months as more people return to eating meals out.<p>“Our business operates the best when inflation is about 3% to 4%,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said on an earnings call with analysts Thursday. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;18&#x2F;business&#x2F;grocery-store-inflation-kroger-albertsons&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnn.com&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;18&#x2F;business&#x2F;grocery-store-inflat...</a>

The way I read it the price of things like eggs increased by 43% (on table 6 which is seasonally adjusted it&#x27;s still 10%)? Does anyone know why?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;app.truflation.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;app.truflation.com&#x2F;</a><p>Worth a look.

Who set the expectation of 7.9%? I&#x27;ve never expected my money to lose value every month.

Demand destruction is setting in.

This is especially good since it was a year ago we started to notice inflation rising rapidly. If this print was higher than expected it would have indicated something really bad. With this print we could be on the path to healthier inflation in the coming year.

Does anyone actually think this number is accurate to a decimal place?

Reporting yearly inflation every month is... confusing at best.

Time to purchasing power halving: 9.4 Years

The whole &quot;expected&quot; thing is sketchy for me. I probably know nothing but why is 7.9% expected, not say 7.5% expected? I think a lot of manipulation of those expectations can be done for &quot;friends in IB&quot;.

&quot;the rate of increase of inflation is decreasing&quot;

0.2% less than expected and s&amp;p pumps 5%. f* this timeline.

lol

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

For those who were wondering if we would officially be in a recession after November 8 elections, the answer is still &quot;no&quot;.

So, when will the US Fed announce its own layoffs? They need to contribute to bringing down inflation.

At what cost? &quot;allies&quot; as collateral damage, the US seems to be playing the solo game, not sure if that&#x27;s gonna serve them well when they&#x27;ll decide to go frontal with China, since their &quot;allies&quot; won&#x27;t be able to be used as proxy anymore, too weak and no morale<p>The US announces retreat

RANT: This inflation and coming recession is entirely on the hands of the current leadership in the Fed and Treasury. Their super-low interest rates over the years are coming full circle. We live in a centrally planned economy. My advice to the Fed is to set the Fed Funds Rate to equal inflation! This will stop the wild swings in the economy and keep inflation in check. When the Fed Funds Rate is lower than inflation there is an arbitrage opportunity for anyone who has access to this money to invest it broadly into the economy and get a positive return. I actually think this is a huge source of income inequality because only the most wealthy have access to this arbitrage opportunity, but that is another rant.