January's Consumer Price Index (CPI) saw inflation rise by 0.5% month-over-month and 3.0% year-over-year, as reported by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), above economist estimates for 0.3% monthly and 2.9% annually. Core CPI — which excludes food and energy costs — rose 0.4% month-over-month (forecasts called for 0.3%) and 3.3% year-over-year (forecasts called for 3.1%).
Seana Smith and Brad Smith break down the key inflation data on the Morning Brief.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.
This post was written by Luke Carberry Mogan.
Welcome to Yahoo! Finance's special coverage of the January CPI report. I'm Seana Smith, alongside Brad Smith, and the key inflation print crossing the wires right now. You're looking at CPI on a year-over-year basis. The headline number coming in at 3%, slightly hotter than expected. On a month-over-month basis, CPI coming in with a rise of 0.5%, much hotter than what the street was looking for. They were looking for a rise of 0.3%. When you take a look at the core numbers, stripping out food and energy, on a month-over-month basis, you're looking at a rise of 0.4%, again hotter than what the street was looking for here. And then that year-over-year number coming in, core CPI coming in at a 3.3% rise, hotter than what the street was expecting. Also, a bit above of what we saw last month, with that reading coming in at 3.2%. So, hot prints here across the board, Brad. When you take a look at the stock's reaction here this morning, you are looking at all three of the major averages on track here to open the day in negative territory here, as we do react to this CPI print. Of course, questions as to what this ultimately means here for the Fed going forward. Obviously, a hotter than expected inflation print could potentially call into question, maybe at some point, we could start talking about rate hikes again. Obviously, a little bit too early. This is just one print. But again, when you take a look at the fact that inflation coming in hotter than expected, this, of course, is a bit alarming, at least at least to the street, at first glance.
Yeah. I'm also taking a look at some of the futures activity as well here, as we're taking a look at the declines across the board for the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq fractionally, as they may be. They are down, all of them, by about 0.8%, 0.9% here. And I'm looking into some of the indexes here as well. About 30% of the increase that we had seen in this CPI report attributed to shelter. That rose 0.4% in January, accounting for nearly 30% of the monthly all-items increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And then looking at some of where inflation did continue to move higher versus where it did decrease, indexes where we saw it actually rise, indexes for, um, ultimately, taking a look at the index for motor vehicle insurance, recreation, used cars and trucks, medical care, communication, and airline fares. Those were among the indexes that increased during the month over the month. Um, however, the indexes for apparel, personal care, household furnishings and operations were among the few, few major indexes that did decrease during January here. And so this, as we're continuing to really price in, and perhaps there's some people out there doing a command F, control F, depending upon what type of operating system you're using, for the price of eggs. Well, guess what? For meats, poultry, fish, and eggs, that rose 1.9% over the month. As the index for eggs increased, get this, 15.2%.
