Inflation barreled ahead at 8.3% in April from a year ago, remaining near 40-year highs
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/11/cpi-april-2022.html
It’s not at 0.2% decrease from March unless you’re playing numbers games with the YoY metric. Inflation MoM increased by 1.23%. The only reason YoY inflation wasn’t as high as last month is because last year April came in up 1.6% MoM. So inflation would need to increase 1.6% or higher MoM to not decrease in April. This is why the market dumped on the 8.3% number. 8.1% was expected.
All Smoke & Mirrors. Inflation is up big month over month. I posted the following before the numbers came out.
👉April YoY CPI is expected to come in at 8.1%. March was 8.5% YoY. The only reason this month is expected to come in lower YoY is simply because the increase in inflation from March to April this year is expected to be lower than the same period last year. Even so, an 8.1% increase YoY in April still represents quite a large unsustainable jump. Last years March to April jump was 1.6% leading to a CPI of 4.2%. The 8.1% estimate represents a YoY increase of 8.1% higher than prices were AFTER the 4.2% a year ago (That’s roughly 12.5% price increases over a 24 month period). In order to hit the Feds target rate of inflation of 2% YoY, we should expect an average jump of 0.17 month to month. So, in order for inflation to be increasing at sustainable rates, we should look for 8.5%+0.17%-1.6%= roughly 7.07% (I say “roughly” because when we’re talking about a rate of increase we should factor in the compounding nature of inflation) . Therefore the consensus of 8.1% actually represents a jump of 1.03% month to month higher than sustainable levels. What we want is inflation to be increasing at a rate lower on average than experienced in the trailing 12 months. Last months 8.5% increase in YoY inflation assumes an 0.71% increase on average month to month while this month is expected to be an increase of 1.03% month to month. So what I would like to see is the CPI coming in lower than 7.61% for April 2022, although current April consensus is 0.49% higher. So to get the true feel of how bad inflation is, look at the MoM numbers … not the YoY numbers. Now … I don’t know how the hell analyst came up with that 8.1% consensus. I was expecting much lower given the 1.6% month to month jump last year. But understanding these numbers is important. We don’t want to get lost in the assumption that YoY inflation coming in lower in the latter month than the previous represents a decline in the rate inflation is actually increasing month to month.
