CPI - A touch higher than expected... and other news!

The data:

headline beat at 5.4 v/s 5.3 expected, 5.3 last month

core in-line, 4.0 v/s 4.0 expected, 4.0 last month

Interesting to see these CPI numbers a touch higher than expected - looks like the USD has taken a bit of a lift here on the back of these numbers.

Interesting to see MoM numbers at 0.4% for standard CPI against estimates of 0.3%. Core was in-line.

Basically, this doesn’t change anything. The Fed already sees the inflation objective as met so the taper is still coming most likely - we had ok jobs so I don’t think this dramatically changes anything.

Also interesting to see some of the previously “transitory” components like used car prices trending down (used car prices down 0.7%)

Not really worth putting any trades on here on the back of this... think this is a status quo number and well within expectations.

JPM Earnings:

This was much more interesting to me... and it was relatively in-line but Investment Banking Revenues beat expectations pretty dramatically.

What was also interesting to see was a significant increase in hiring. This means that clearly we have a bull market on for labour and wage increases could well continue. That said, this is the typical cycle with banks hiring in the boom and making redundancies in the bust.

Also a significant reduction in provision for losses with over 2 billion released.

All-in-all, these results are great and JPM is doing ok in the pre-market, up 0.5% or so. It’s a great company and think this is good for the stock. We’re seeing some moves in yield curves and hopefully we’ll start to see even higher bank profitability in quarters to come.

(Disclaimer: I am quite long the stock :) ).

Amazon in trouble?

Saw a report about an hour ago which had some bad news for Amazon on the regulatory front as it showed it basically copied competitors products and boosted its own products in search results.

I’m not sure who’s surprised about this, and the market doesn’t seem too bothered, but certainly doesn’t help the big regulatory picture for their mega cap tech space.

Anyway that’s all for now. Any questions let me know.