The personal consumption expenditures core price index, which excludes food and energy, rose 4.4% in December from a year earlier, Commerce Department data showed Friday. The overall gauge climbed 5% year-over-year, still well above the Fed’s 2% goal but both were the slowest paces since late 2021.
Personal spending, adjusted for changes in prices, dropped 0.3% in December. Inflation-adjusted outlays for merchandise fell 0.9%, while spending on services stagnated, the first month without an increase since January 2022.
I don’t really understand why Cathie Wood is viewed as some kind of guru. Her comments on Bitcoin are…let’s just say unpersuasive. Bitcoin aside, she doesn’t seem very good at investing Over the last five years:
My favored bachelor chow sold, pre-plague for $2.89. Often on sale for $2.50 or $2.00. Post plague, the price was marked up to $3.89, and never went on sale. Now, over the last few weeks, it has been on sale at $3.00 or less.
In 21, Tim’s, Arby’s, Wendy’s were always full price. Now, I receive sheets of coupons from Arby’s and BK every couple weeks, and I was just gifted a sheet of coupons from Wendy’s this week. Lunch today was a Wendy’s double burger, small fry and small Coke, for $6.00.
That was my backup plan. I wanted a Caesar salad, had a $1 off coupon for that. The guy said they were out of the salad, so I whipped out the coupon for the burger meal. I also had plan C. If the Wendy’s was entirely hors de combat, I had a coupon for a sandwich at the Arby’s a couple doors down the street. When I was in B-School, I had a course in “contingency management”. Seems the lesson stuck, as I often have a plan B at the ready if something goes awry.
“Taken in tandem with the output data where industrial production has declined in six of the past eight months, it is increasingly evident that the manufacturing recession is well underway,” Wells Fargo & Co. economists Tim Quinlan and Shannon Seery said in a note to clients.
