Friday Items

I was on CNBC on Friday and that usually takes up a good part of the afternoon. There were, however, a few items from Friday that I wanted to highlight.

First up, the September retail sales report showed the biggest increase in 2.5 years. Much of this is due to bouncing bank from the hurricane-impacted data. Retail sales rose 1.6% in September, which was 0.1% below estimates. If we exclude autos and gas, then retail sales rose by 0.5%.

Secondly, consumer confidence rose to a 13-year high. The University of Michigan report showed a reading of 101.1. That’s the highest since January 2004.

We also got the CPI report on Friday. Consumer prices rose by 0.5% last month. Although it was 0.1% below expectations, this was the largest rise for inflation since January. In the last year, inflation is up 2.2%.

The core rate, however, rose by just 0.1%. In the last year, core inflation is running at 1.7%. Despite whatever the Fed fears, inflation is still not a problem.

Posted by on October 14th, 2017 at 12:20 pm


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