E-piphany

Below is a summary of my post-CPI tweets. You can (and should!) follow me @inflation_guy. Or, sign up for email updates to my occasional articles here. Investors, issuers and risk managers with interests in this area be sure to stop by Enduring Investments! Get the Inflation Guy app in your app store! Check out the Inflation Guy podcast!

• Well, here we go! It’s #CPI Day, which this month happens to fall on the day after an intraday 60-cent drop in gasoline futures. THAT will clear your sinuses!
• Before the walkup, let me tell ya that I will be on @TDANetwork today with Nicole Petallides @Npetallides at 11:50ET. Tune in!
• Also, when I am done with the tweets today I will post a summary at https://mikeashton.wordpress.com . Later it will be podcasted at http://inflationguy.podbean.com. And all of that also will be linked on the Inflation Guy mobile app. Now with those preliminaries…let’s dig in.
• We will get fresh 40-year-record highs again today, with the consensus calling for 0.8% m/m on headline (7.9% y/y) and 0.5% m/m on core (6.4% y/y).
• The last four m/m core inflation figures have been tightly clustered from +0.523% and +0.603%, so the forecast is not terribly adventurous. There have been a few calls for hitting 8% y/y today, but I think some of those are so people can say they called for 8%.
• We will get there next month, so no hurry.
• That tight cluster of recent prints is really the main thrust of the story. The distribution of monthly core inflation is no longer around 0.2% per month or a little less. It’s around 0.5%. Hopefully we can get that down to 0.4% or even 0.3% eventually. But we’re not there now.
• I should say that’s the main thrust of the CONTINUING story. This month, we have other stories courtesy of Vladimir Putin.
• But, as a reminder, this inflation debacle started LONG before Russia invaded Ukraine. And it was committed with a worse weapon than a gun: the printing press. You can hide from a gun. You can’t hide from the printing press.
• The Russian invasion caused disruption in the supplies of many commodities and helped spike energy prices. But remember, these are commodities. As long as Russia sells to SOMEONE, the eventual effect on energy prices will be much less than the short-term effect.
• We covered this before with Chinese purchases of soybeans. So if Russia is constrained to only sell energy to, say, China, then China needs to buy less from, say, Saudi Arabia. Which means the Saudis have more to sell to us, or whoever previously got it from Russia.
• Commodities are pretty similar. Part of the definition. So it disrupts the flow, but gasoline doesn’t spoil (ok, sure, it spoils, but slowly). I’m much more worried about wheat. If you don’t plant wheat this spring in the Ukraine, there will be less wheat globally for the year.
• Now, unlike raw gasoline, which we consume in its commodity form and so shows directly in the CPI, raw food commodities don’t take the same path. Your Cheerios have oats, but they also have a lot of packaging, transportation, advertising, and so on.
• That said, these large and sustained increases in energy affect food inflation through transportation, packaging, fertilizer too. Add to the impact of the war on planted acreage and you have the ingredients for a SUSTAINED increase in food prices for a while.
• We usually look past food and energy, and focus on core, because food and energy mean revert pretty quickly. They won’t, this time, as quickly and that’s part of why CPI is broadening. And it’s why even after the peak, inflation won’t automatically recede on base effects.
• Also, if energy prices spike, there is no guarantee it will affect other products so much because producers can smooth through spikes. A spike in wheat need not impact wages. But SUSTAINED increases in prices seep into those other goods and services. And they have.
• …about wages, which is another interesting and important story. The Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker, for my money the best measure of overall wage pressure since it focuses on continuously-employed people, is up at a 5.1% y/y pace.
• Wages by that measure have actually been tracking pretty well with Median CPI. The chart of Wages minus median CPI is weirdly stable given everything that is happening. Implication?

• What that says is that far from “not engaging a wage-price spiral,” the labor force is actually being uber-efficient at getting their wages adjusted. On average, of course, and adjusting for median not core. Median is a better sense of the middle – not driven by used cars, e.g.!
• Does all of the transparency, the “Indeed.coms” of the world, make it easier to have a wage-price spiral because workers adjust their wage demands more quickly with better information? I wonder.
• Back to the market and today’s figure. Here are the market changes over the last month. Yes, 1-year inflation expectations are +150bps. 10-years are +45bps. 10-year real yields are -44bps. (No surprise, with real yields down, gold is +8% over that timeframe). This is dramatic.

• Wanna know what scares me? This chart. Money supply growth is still at 12% y/y, which is bad. But see commercial bank credit? It’s ACCELERATING. Concerning. The Fed directly controls neither of these, when they don’t control the marginal reserve dollar.

• Now, for the CPI today. Rents will continue to boom, and used cars may settle back slightly. There are some signs of that. But that’s the fireworks. But I am gonna watch pharmaceuticals, and food & energy, more than usual.
• The real excitement there will be NEXT month – this is Feb’s number and the Ukraine invasion hadn’t happened yet. Whatever today’s figure shows, it will just be the jumping off point for the March spike.
• The interbank market still has the peak headline CPI in March (March 2021 was +0.31 on core, but April was +0.86, so it will be hard to have a new high in core at least after March), but now it has that peak at 8.55%. Go ahead, gasp. It’s a gasp kind of number.
• That’s it for the walkup. Look for weakness anywhere in the number – won’t be much of it, so relish what you find. We no longer need clues about whether inflation is coming. It’s here. We need to start finding clues about a deceleration beyond base effects. Haven’t seen any yet.

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• The economists nailed this one. 0.8% on the headline, 0.51% on core (6.42% y/y on core). Yes, all 40+ -year highs. And still pretty much in the zone. Trend core inflation is right around 6-7% at the moment.

• As expected, used cars fell a little, -0.25% m/m. But y/y still rose, to 41.2%. Other of the “COVID Categories”: airfares +5.2% m/m, lodging away from home +2.2%, new cars/trucks +0.3%, motor vehicle insurance +1.8%, Car/truck rental +3.5%. Ouch all around.
• (of course, since they’re covid categories, lots of people will want to strip out all of that).
• Food & Beverage major category: +1% m/m, up to 7.62% y/y. That’s the largest y/y rise in that category of CPI since 1981.
• Core Goods at 12.3% y/y. Core Services 4.4%.

• Rents: OER was +0.45% and Primary Rents +0.57%. Both represent accelerations over last month. Y/Y is at 4.3% for OER and 4.2% for Primary.
• Medical Care continues to be a conundrum. Overall, that category rose 0.17% m/m after +0.85% last month. Pharma was +0.4% and continues to be the strong one. Doctors’ Services fell again. And this month Hospital Services also fell. I don’t understand that at all.
• Core inflation ex-housing was 7.60%. in March 2020 it was 1.49% and it fell to 0.33% in May 2020.
• Apparel, +0.72%. Recreation +0.73% m/m. “Other” +1.06% m/m.
• Within Food & Beverages: Food at home (8.2% of the CPI): +1.4% NSA m/m; +8.6% y/y. Food away from home: +0.4% m/m, +6.8% y/y. Alcoholic Beverages +0.9% m/m, +3.5% y/y.
• Food at home AND food away from home both at 42-year highs.

• drilling down, the ONLY categories of food and beverages that declined in price: Fresh Fish and Seafood, -0.70% m/m in NSA terms, Bananas, -0.10%, Lettuce -0.29%, Tomatoes -1.88%, uncooked beef steaks -0.19%, and Pork Chops -0.01%. Most of that was seasonal as y/y accelerated.
• Early guess at Median CPI is +0.54% m/m, which is down only slightly from last month’s spike. That median is now looking like core is what tells you that this isn’t just one-off categories.

• Incidentally, my median estimate might be low…the median categories look to be the regional housing OERs, which the Cleveland Fed seasonally adjusts separately. I’m more likely to be low the way the chips fell. Either way, Median at 4.60% is really disturbing.
• Let’s do the four pieces charts. First, Food & Energy. Unlike prior spikes, this is going to roll over more slowly. The rate of change will mean-revert. But the food part I think will remain a positive inflation contributor for much longer than normal (prices will keep rising).

• Core goods. Nothing much to say. This is beyond automobiles. Part of this is pass-through of energy prices (via freight, packaging), so it’s a non-core effect on core. Some are bottlenecks. None look to be easing in the near-term.

• This chart, piece 3, is interesting because about a quarter of this is doctors’ and hospital services, which have been pretty tame so far. And yet, it’s almost at 4%.

• Finally, Rent of Shelter. Almost at 5%. So actually, the core-services piece is holding down inflation now…not shelter. Remember that shelter is the big, slow piece. Some people are calling for OER at 7%. I don’t get that from my models. But still, it’s going higher.

• …and rents are part of the wage-price feedback loop. (Remember that the dip in 2021 was largely artificial because of the eviction moratorium, and everyone knew it, which is why it didn’t change wage demands much).

• Almost 80% of the consumption basket is inflating faster than 4%. About a third is inflating faster than 6%.

• At least by one set of models, the OER rise may be cresting soon. I’m a little skeptical but that’s what the model says. However, it’s not going to turn around and drop, which means core inflation will be high for a while. Not just 2022.

• So I said to look for evidence of deceleration. There’s not much. But there’s a LITTLE. The Enduring Investments Inflation Diffusion Index declined to 35 from 41. That’s not a lot, but it’s in the right direction.

• So wrapping up: there’s no real sign of any ebbing of inflation pressures. In fact, there are some signs that food inflation will stay elevated for longer than the normal oscillation cycle. But we are closer to the end of the spike, anyway, than to the beginning.
• Core inflation will likely peak next month, and headline inflation in the next couple of months. That’s good. But we’re not going to go back to 2%. Right now, the monthly prints point to an underlying core rate around 6%. I suspect we will end 2022 in the 5s, or high 4s.
• If there’s any chance to get to the 3s in 2023, it would be because the Fed starts to shrink its balance sheet with some urgency. I see zero chance of that.
• In fact, as I’ve long said – the Fed is not going to tighten at every meeting. They’ll have excuses to skip meetings and assess.
• For example, although Russia/Ukraine has nothing to do with monetary policy, it took 50bps off the table for this month – we will get a 25bp cosmetic hike in rates – and probably means they skip next meeting. And then once inflation peaks they’ll want to see how fast it ebbs.
• Don’t want to overtighten, you know. The net result is that inflation is getting embedded in our psyche and it will be very long until we get 2-3% core inflation on a regular basis.
• That’s all for today. Thanks for tuning in. Catch me on @TDANetwork at 11:50ET and look for my tweet summary at https://mikeashton.wordpress.com . Curious what tools we’re working on in inflation? Stop by http://enduringinvestments.com . Subscribe to my podcast. https://inflationguy.podbean.com Etcetera!

Core inflation for the last 5 months has been in a tight range suggesting 6%-7% is the underlying trend rate; this started long before Russia invaded Ukraine. The invasion means that food inflation will take longer to ebb than it usually does, as not only are we getting pass-through from the extended period of high energy prices (affecting freight, packaging, and fertilizer) but we’re also seeing plantings in Ukraine likely to be disrupted. But it isn’t just food and energy, but everything across the board. A plurality of the consumption basket is inflating faster than 6%!

And this is seeping into wages, and quite quickly at that. Wages are actually adjusting to the level of unemployment more quickly than history would suggest they should be. Based on where unemployment was 9 months ago, the Atlanta Fed Wage Growth Tracker should be around 3.5%. Based on where unemployment is now, it should be around 5%. It’s already there.

I showed a chart earlier illustrating that wages are not trailing inflation in the way that we normally expect that they would. Workers, possibly because there’s been so much turnover thanks to COVID and possibly because of the transparency of wages these days, are getting wage adjustments that keep them about where they historically have been with respect to inflation. That’s remarkable, but also problematic if there is anything to the “wage-price-spiral” thought process.

But at the end of the day I still don’t think the Fed is willing to move fast and break things. In the classroom, the Taylor Rule says they are dramatically behind the curve and should be hiking rates. Of course, the classroom also says that they should do that by adjusting reserves, which they no longer do, so the textbook is clearly flexible. But in the real world, Fed moves do not happen on paper and they don’t just move prices and output. They also crack over-levered entities and cause financial distress in unexpected places that leads to other bad things. The Fed has “learned” this over the years and it’s one of many reasons that I don’t think we’re going to see 200bps of tightening. And probably not 100bps of tightening, in 2022. They will be cautious, measure-twice-cut-once, speak sagely and calmly in the press conferences, and hope to God that they haven’t really messed it all up.

They have.