Another big macroeconomic report to hang over stocks, depressing volatility.
After all, who wants to get out ahead of Thursday’s Consumer Price Index inflation report for October?
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg project that CPI headline inflation will slip to an annual rate of 7.9% for October, down from the annual rate of 8.2% in September.
That would be encouraging on direction–since down is good–but disappointing on speed–since the stock market is hoping that the Federal Reserve will be able to pivot to cutting interest rates relatively soon and that would require inflation to fall at a much faster rate.
The core inflation number–which excludes volatile food and energy prices–is projected to slide to an annual rate of 6.5% in October from 6.6% in September.
Given the statistical uncertainties in the CPI calculation, I’m not even sure that counts as a drop in core inflation.
