Inflation / persistence Hotter, sticky ▲

Gundlach (Jun 12): inflation runs hotter and longer than consensus — headline CPI at a 3-year high (3.8%), and a 1966–82 overlay has the current path entering its "second burst." Leading reads point up: energy leads CPI services by ~8 months and ISM prices-paid (55→71) does too, both pointing services toward 5%+, while his preferred "unfettered" import/export price indices average ~6.5%. Getting back to a 25-year 2% trend would need ~0–1.6% inflation for years (won't happen barring a deflationary debt spiral), so the Fed "may retire the 2% target." Keep a commodities sleeve (add nearer the 200-day). Eisman (Jun 12): "the numbers are not good" — CPI 4.2%, a 3-year high; core 2.9%; and a hot PPI the next day — reinforcing the near-zero-cut / non-zero-hike setup. Singh (Jun 14): CPI met expectations (+0.5% m/m, +4.2% y/y) but the 3-month annualized run-rate is ~8.2% and 46 of 68 global central banks are overshooting their targets (ECB hiked) — the structural inflation that pins Warsh to a hawkish hold even with the peace-treaty oil relief (which takes ~3 months to feed through). Shaulov (Sohn, May 12): AI is "highly deflationary" long-term ("a lot more for a lot less," healthcare the prime target) but inflationary first — CPU/memory/infrastructure input costs are "skyrocketing" and the labor market stays robust (software-engineer hiring +18% in a month as the old economy implements LLMs); "sticky inflation first," then deflation as robotics layers on — which "makes the Fed's job challenging." Singh (Jun 21): PCE prints next week and is the key tell — forecasters see core PCE ~0.35% in May (→ 3.4% y/y) and the 6-month annualized rate climbing to ~4.1% (highest since June 2023), the structural inflation that keeps the Fed from cutting all year despite the on/off peace-deal oil swings. Robotti (RWH046, 2024-JUN-22; SumZero, 2025-JUL-24): "inflation is the dog, the Fed is the tail" — inflation sets rates and the Fed only follows, so forecasting the Fed is wasted effort. He argues China (not Volcker) cured inflation by absorbing global production for 40-50 yrs; now a high-cost net importer, that disinflation reverses, and with deficits compounding, the "evolution of globalization" raising supply-chain costs, and tariffs on top, 2022's joint stock+bond drawdown was a precursor, not an anomaly capital hasn't repriced — every cash flow (stock or bond) is worth less in a higher-rate regime, so re-underwrite to a real risk-free rate and own real assets. Contrarian Codex (May 29): "April was the on-ramp, not the peak" — the disinflationary goods crutch (core goods flat→~3% YoY, the firmest since 2022) is gone, and an energy shock arrives in waves: gasoline/fuel-oil pass through fast while the slow wave runs diesel→freight→every shelf, natural gas→fertilizer→food-at-home 6–9 months out, and jet fuel→airfares, so a meaningful slug of 2H inflation is already baked even if Hormuz reopened tomorrow; base effects compound it, producer prices lead consumer prints, and a sitting Treasury Secretary pre-warning of "uncomfortably hot" readings is "someone getting in front of a number they've already seen the shape of." Link (Halftime, Jun 29): oil −39% from its highs is a consumer/business tax cut and maybe signals peak inflation, with bond yields coming down to confirm. Paulo Macro (2026-MAR-08, back-fill — "Make 1973 Great Again"): maps the Yom Kippur/embargo playbook across assets — crude quadrupled after the ceasefire, USD up, gold doubled into 1Q74, equities −17%, rates up — and argues that in a jobs-recession + energy-shock debt spiral, bonds are an accelerant, not a stabilizer: long-end term-premia pain even under a Warsh Fed. Paulo Macro (Jul 8): classic stagflation, with room for the consensus to firm — supercore (core ex-shelter) stuck bouncing 3–4% vs Warsh's 2% ambition; NFIB small-business compensation/pricing plans lead wages and supercore by ~8 months and bias higher into autumn; manufacturing prices-paid (a 9-month lead on CPI) keeps cycling higher through summer; wage growth sticky for stayers and switchers alike — while Warsh's preferred Dallas-Fed trimmed mean "simply trails CPI YoY by 6 months when big amplitudes are involved." Barron's Roundtable (Jul 10, the split midyear panel): Cohen/Black — core inflation is stuck above 3% vs the 2% target with expansionary money (M2 +5.6%), and Black "wouldn't be surprised" by a year-end HIKE; Jain — the 2-yr has sat above 4% since mid-May, BofA forecasts three hikes, and a cyclicals-led index deserves a lower P/E; Desai — Warsh is the most hawkish chair since Volcker, baseline NO hike but the 10-yr ends the year ~4.75%+ (appropriate funds rate 4–4.25%); Ahlsten's contrarian twist — hikes could LOWER long yields by restoring inflation credibility, a positive for risk assets (his S&P target ~8,100). (2026-AUG-03, John Polomny / AIA monthly) The structural case, stated as the reason for the whole portfolio: Western democracies are "all in huge amounts of debt" with health-care and retirement obligations they "cannot pay" owed to large elderly populations — and "because people vote for free stuff and the politicians respond to this desire by voters to, as Bastiat said, seek to live off of each other, there is only one potential path. All roads lead to inflation." "Too much debt and not enough GDP to support it… it does not matter who you vote for; you will get more spending." Deferral "has worked brilliantly and will continue to work until it doesn't," and "inflation is insidious even if the FED were to meet its fake 2% goal." The investable answer is scarcity — "things that we need to survive but that can't be created out of thin air or by government fiat," including scarcity "created by government interventions into the economy by dumb policies, regulations, war." 2026-AUG-07 — CNBC Halftime (Link): "kind of close to Goldilocks" — average hourly earnings slowing to 3.2% from 3.4%, unit labour costs much lower than expected and productivity higher. "Productivity is the story… I don't think they're going to raise between now and the end of the year" — with productivity at 1.7% still far below the 4-5% of the 1950s-60s. Simpson's bookend: ~36,000 jobs on a 12-month view means "the Fed is not in any position where they can hike rates," but expecting a cut "is not it either." 2026-AUG-11 — Oakley (David Lin Report): expects CPI to drift higher another quarter or two — lumber "goes into everything we do in the US" and is moving a lot higher on the Canada dispute, plus energy; sees it possibly breaking down next year "but I just don't think that's going to happen next 6 months." Separately, reported earnings are flattered — unmarked private investments carried as profit, accounting changes in the "one big business bill," and one-time tariff refunds now being booked: "when you shake it all out they won't be near as good as what people think." 2026-AUG-12 (Hayes): The two stickiest post-COVID components are finally softening "against all consensus" — insurance premiums and owners' equivalent rent/rents — while 5-yr breakevens stay contained despite Iran; Aug-12 CPI printed 3.4% headline / 2.5% core, cooler than prior, feeding consumer confidence's turn off all-time lows. 2026-JUN-16 (McDonald, historical): On the Hormuz-reopening morning: "when you close the strait for 100 days, there's a price to pay" — fertilizer/food plus semiconductor inputs (tungsten/critical minerals "essentially being hoarded," a Japanese end-June supply warning), a 3–6 week digestion window, summer-driving/World Cup amplifiers; super-core annualizing ~11% over the prior 3 months — '70s–'80s-style stagflation. 2026-AUG-15 — Rick Rieder (BlackRock CIO Global Fixed Income, Bloomberg WSW): the run-rate, not the print — "8 of the 10 [core CPI prints] have been .2 rounded or below"; core CPI 1.6%, 2.4% over six months, and "when you strip shelter out, it's actually running at about half that." House forecast core PCE ~2.8% by year-end, 2.5% next year; residual pressure isolated to hotels/airlines/leisure ("think about the World Cup effect"). "Certainly not daunting by any stretch relative to anything we've seen in history… I don't think that's going to be the thing that disrupts the markets." The tolerance band is asymmetric: with this much debt "you can't have a deflating dynamic because it enhances the true cost of the debt." AUG-16 (Jay Singh, SSR): both July prints cooled — headline PPI +4.7% vs +4.9% expected and 0.0% m/m vs +0.2%, core PPI +4.2% vs +4.1% but only +0.2% m/m vs +0.3%, with CPI "cooler." The offsetting reason he gives is uncomfortable rather than reassuring: "the fact that real wages have slowed down also means that inflation is behind us" — i.e. the disinflation is coming from the income side, and cost of living is still +25% over five years. Bank of America is still "sticking with its call for 75 bips of Fed rate hikes." 2026-AUG-17 — Jay Singh (David Lin Report): CPI met expectations and PPI final demand printed 0% m/m vs a +2% survey (annualized 4.7 vs 4.9; core 4.2 vs 4.1, "a little bit hotter"). Real-estate inflation is dragging headline CPI down. Consumer anger is about price levels, not the inflation rate — essentials 20–25% above pre-pandemic; refiner crack spreads keep pump prices high even as oil falls. 2026-AUG-19 (Ted Oakley, Oxbow Advisors, The Real Story): $40T of debt "we cannot get out of in any ordinary way," hitting the entitlement wall within ~5 years, "and there's nothing they'll do about it because they will not be austere." The exit is post-WWII-style stealth inflation, then 8–10 years of stagflation; hard assets for the next 7–10 in a multipolar world where "everybody's hoarding their assets." 2026-AUG-26: Rule prices the gap between headline and lived inflation at 8-9% compounded dollar purchasing-power decay, and treats the long end's rise as private savers pricing that gap — “the underlying rate of US inflation… is different than the CPI.” (Rick Rule, David Lin Report 2026-AUG-26) 2026-AUG-19: Faber: “all roads to me lead to inflation. And in that world you have to be an owner and own assets” — a complete allocation needs real assets (commodities, commodity equities, TIPS, global REITs), the third of his three standard allocation failures. (Meb Faber, Cambria webinar 2026-AUG-19) 2026-AUG-28: Core PCE 0.2% m/m / 3.3% y/y in line; headline 0.2% / 3.7% "a touch hot" — the 65th consecutive month above the 2% target. July's energy component fell 1.5%, so the crude move "is not in this print just yet as it lands in the August and September data instead." And 50% tariffs are now live in both directions on $20–28bn of Canadian goods (Canada matching dollar-for-dollar from the second week of September): "I struggle to construct a path where you run 50% tariffs in both directions against your largest trading partner and get a disinflationary outcome out the other end." (Contrarian Codex 2026-AUG-28) 2026-AUG-30 (Jay Singh, SSR call): July headline PCE 3.7% vs 3.6% expected; core PCE 3.3%, in line but the second-highest reading since October 2024. His reason for discounting it: "more than half of the core PCE came from portfolio management and investment advice fees, reflecting equity price gains in the market" — the inflation measure is partly a function of the stock market. The forward risk is energy: "another string of hot inflation data, more likely given the rise of gasoline and diesel prices in August." His prescription for Warsh: "the best thing that Kevin Warsh could do at this point, to be able to lower rates later, would be to reaffirm the Fed's commitment to PCE until it hits 2%." 2026-SEP-02 (Prinsights, syndicated from The Contrarian Capitalist): the refined-product channel for sticky inflation — a diesel crack above $100 transmits straight into farming, freight, rail, shipping, construction and mining, so a wide crack spread keeps the inflationary impulse alive even if crude itself softens. Physical confirmation against the official prints: US retail diesel back over $5/gal; state gasoline increases of +22% (California) to +69% (Iowa, Oklahoma) between 18-FEB and 20-AUG-2026 (~$15 more per 12-gallon fill-up; California $5.59/gal); Bloomberg cereals (wheat/corn/barley/rice) +22% YoY through July. Explicitly cost-push, not demand-pull — "central banks cannot refine more diesel or rebuild inventories by decree" — hence the advice to take CPI/PPI/PCE "with a pinch of salt." Near-term policy call: no Fed hike in September or October; "the best thing they can do is do nothing." 2026-SEP-01 (Sonders/Schwab, Master Investor): the inflation the Fed faces is largely supply-side — energy "is a supply problem, it's not really a demand problem," and "even the tariff impact on inflation, that's a bit of a supply problem" — and monetary policy "can only do so much" against supply-side inflation. Consequence for equities: inflation that is not coming down means "you probably don't have a lot of upside from a multiple perspective" even with the forward P/E down from ~22x to ~19x. The mathematical way out is nominal growth of mid-to-high single digits, running faster than both inflation and debt growth — "we're not there." Dillian (2026-SEP-03): the direction-over-level dissent — “the reality is that inflation is not that high. It’s come down quite a bit in the last couple of months. It continues to come down,” and five years above target matters less to him than the trend. But he is not in the AI-disinflation camp either: he half-endorses Torsten Slok’s two-branch bond argument (“AI succeeds and it’s massively deflationary … or AI fails and the market crashes … I don’t see a scenario where yields don’t come down”) only “on a 10-year time horizon,” and rebuts the tech-is-deflationary premise with one line — “Have you paid your Netflix bill? It’s not that deflationary.” Net: “the demand for capital from capex is going to be so much more of an inflationary force than the deflationary force of increasing productivity.” On productivity itself he is a sceptic of the measurement, not the concept: “it’s just such a hard thing to measure … productivity skyrocketed in March and April 2020 because so many people got laid off” — capital and labour sit in the denominator, so a collapse in the denominator flatters the number. “I’m a fader of productivity.” 2026-SEP-07 (Nomi Prins): average hourly earnings +3.1% y/y against sticky inflation ~3.4%, so “consumer purchasing power is actively degrading” — a negative real wage, not a wage-price spiral, and therefore not the overheating that would force the Fed's hand. 2026-SEP-07 (Joe Brown) — a quantity-theory dissent from the rate-centric consensus: inflation is set by the ratio of money-supply growth to growth in the stock of goods and services; money-supply growth y/y and CPI y/y track tightly and the money supply has risen since 2023, “so why are we surprised that inflation is sticky?” The second-order trap: hiking the short rate while money creation continues attacks the denominator — harder to hire, borrow, fund R&D and add capacity — so “by raising short-term interest rates while the money supply still grows, you can make inflation worse.” His prescription is fiscal and regulatory, not monetary. 2026-SEP-08 (Rick Rule): “real inflation — if you define inflation as the deterioration in the purchasing power of your currency — is more like eight or 10%,” well above the official statistics. His 1970s analogue comes with a price attached: McDonald's sold five burgers for a dollar in 1966–67 and one for a dollar by 1972. Recognition arrives Hemingway-style, “slowly at first and then all of a sudden,” because “people's expectations of the future were set by their experience in the immediate past” — and the last cure “really took six years.” Contrarian Codex (2026-SEP-07) puts the pressure in the product market rather than crude: Gulf Coast diesel cracks cleared $100/bbl in mid-August for the first time ever and have only slipped into the $90s, above anything printed in 2022, with distillate inventories near 107m barrels — the lowest for the time of year since 1996, ~12% under the 5-year average and drawing for a fourth straight week — refiners running flat out and deferring maintenance, "leaving the complex one hurricane from new records." "Crude has spent 6 months looking at least somewhat contained, while the thing the voter buys broke out, and the FOMC reads the sign at the pump as 'number go up'." Waller's own coin-flip framing supplies the mechanism: transitory survives one shock but not a sequence, at which point a central bank losing the public "moves whether or not moving is correct." His policy verdict: "higher rates feed straight into the very cost-push inflation the hawks are itching to raise rates to kill. You cannot hike your way out of a cost problem that your own hikes are half-creating, and this whole shock came out of an oil war rather than an overheating consumer." 2026-SEP-07 (RiskReversal — Nathan): the number under the jobs beat — average hourly earnings +3.1% (3.2% prior) against inflation 3.4%, so “inflation is eating up all wage gains”: a real-income decline inside a strong-payroll headline, and the reason the consumer-stress view survives the print. 2026-SEP-08 (Jared Dillian, Excess Returns) — a dissent: "at the moment, I'm not worried about inflation. I think inflation is coming down," while conceding a future episode is possible — hence the two hard-asset sleeves (gold, real estate) as a built-in hedge that would carry 10–30% inflation. 2026-SEP-08 (CNBC Halftime, Lebenthal): the input that reaches CPI is not crude but diesel — at a record, with "no inventories to fall back on" and "no China cutting demand" — and it prices into truck shipping, farms and crop prices. With no earnings until October, September is "a sort of no man's land… with the trend to the downside as inflation figures continue to disappoint." 2026-SEP-08 (Larry McDonald, Julia La Roche): diesel, corn and wheat breaking out while inflation expectations fell — the same divergence as Q3–Q4 2021, when the Fed called it transitory just before expectations exploded. With the strait effectively closed for ~200 days, "the next three CPI prints are very treacherous," and equity volatility is cheap against exactly that catalyst. 2026-SEP-09 (Peter Grandich): the stagflation test, stated as a ranking — "3% inflation in a moderate to slow economy is actually worse than 5% inflation in a strong economy." Judge the print against the growth it sits on, and check its vintage: energy (oil back above $100, diesel "through the roof") moved after the survey period closed, so "the next month's numbers could be even worse." 2026-SEP-04 (Inigo Fraser Jenkins): a higher equilibrium, not runaway — "I wouldn't want to forecast unanchored inflation. Far from it. But simply higher equilibrium inflation. Let's call it high twos, 3%," with automation as the disinflationary offset — while conceding "it would be a brave economist who pointed to all these forces and simply put a coefficient on them and added them up, because we've never been here before." The number that matters is the 4% kink: "much higher than four and equities stop behaving like a real asset," above which "your portfolio that protects against inflation doesn't want to have bonds or equities in it." His sub-4 forecast is precisely what keeps recognizable portfolios usable. Second axis: the volatility of inflation rises too — deglobalization "crimps the ability to cushion price shocks," and AI's physical-capex demand collides with "limits on the US's ability or willingness to play a policeman role," implying more supply shocks that rotate — "this year oil is the topic, but in future years it could be cobalt or lithium or copper." McGlone (2026-SEP-10) dissents: his post-inflation deflation thesis is "delayed, extended, and it'll be more extreme" — as in 2008, the war's energy spike is short-term inflation (the ECB hiked in 2008 and 2011, then cut hard when stocks fell). The stock market going down is the trigger, and "the higher plateau drops harder." Dissent, Lebowitz (Sep 10): strip food, energy and outliers and 'there's really no signs that inflation is picking up.' CPI prints of -0.4 and +0.1/0.2 came before Jackson Hole, and Fed research shows the tariff impulse waning. Public 'cocktail-party inflation' confuses the price level with its rate of change: eggs at $6 that stay at $6 are zero inflation. CNBC Halftime (2026-sep-11): core CPI comes in hotter than expected, following a PPI that Saccocia says foreshadowed it ("when you saw PPI, you expected CPI to also be probably a little bit hotter"). Lebenthal argues part of the impulse is temporary — the energy effect of the Iran war and tariffs still playing out — so the hike reads as preventative rather than catch-up. The airfare component is hot enough that Lebenthal trades it as a revenue signal (Delta) rather than a rates signal. Paulo Macro (Sep-12): "ISM Services Prices Paid is telling us CPI is about to pop" — the diesel national average just broke above $6 to all-time highs, and "diesel touches everything" (shipping, retail, food); stagflation returning via a soft patch. Davolos (Sep 12): the 2010-19 zero-rate, sub-2%-inflation era was a radical anomaly that is almost certain not to recur. Long-duration compounders waiting for rates to rescue them are making an unwitting macro bet; own nominally indexed cash flow (scarce real assets in capital-light models). Jay Singh (SEP-13): August CPI 0.4% m/m / 3.4% y/y driven by fuel oil +52%, gasoline +27%, airfares +23%; core services ex-housing +0.5% (highest since January); diesel a record ~$6.05/gal; UMich one-year expectations 4% → 4.6%; oil-yield daily correlation 0.85 (Brean) — "energy, metals, and agricultural price increases are creating a 2027 core inflation problem." Kitco NEWS (Sep 13): Friday's core CPI came in hot, with more than a third of the headline from gasoline (Labor Department). Guest 1's supply-shock diagnosis strengthened ('inflation came out of a war, not out of a hot economy') even as the market priced the hike. Anna Wong (2026-SEP-11) dissents: August core CPI missed by only 5 bp (0.29 vs 0.24), entirely from Verizon wireless plans and an Airbnb lodging-policy change. Rents, food and drug prices are disinflating. Diesel at $6 passes through to groceries and heavy appliances, and September headline CPI is likely at least 0.4%. But with crude back to $60-70, headline CPI could fall below 2% in Q1 2027: 'the faster it rises, the faster it falls.' 2026-SEP-10 Gundlach: his purest gauge, the unadjusted import (5.95%) and export (8.25%) price indices, averages ~7%. PCE headline 3.7% / core 3.3% with 6-month annualized above 12-month. Residential electricity +50% in 8 years (12.5 to 18 cents). The 1966-82 CPI overlay is still eerily similar. Short-term TIPS are "too cheap" because breakevens assume 2% immediately. 2026-SEP-14 — David Rosenberg: dissent — a price shock, not durable inflation. Nominal wage growth has decelerated for a year (no second-round channel); 45% of August CPI components flat/negative vs a ~40% norm; mapping industry data (Manheim, hotel rates, PPI telecom) into CPI puts August core 'close to being flat'. Oil acts as 'a tax hike on the private sector' → negative real wages and a margin squeeze. 2026-SEP-14 (David Hay): diesel at double the crude price is pervasive enough to raise 'the ugly specter of stagflation'; Sep-15: 'both interest rates and oil prices soaring.' 2026-SEP-15 (CNBC, Rieder): "what's driving inflation is interest rate insensitive" — war, energy, education, insurance, healthcare; Lebenthal (Sep 14): energy spikes "haven't yet flowed through", diesel at a record with no new capacity; Link: AI is "inflationary in the short term". Dissent — Mike Taylor (Hedgeye, 2026-SEP-15): next year is 'the beginning of negative pricing power' with inflation 'materially down' (deficit-built corporate capacity meets weak demand); Gundlach's +7% y/y US import/export prices is next year's comp ('really hard to outdo'). Host McCullough's nowcast peaks ~3.75% this year and halves by Q2 on base effects. Paul Sankey (2026-SEP-15): diesel at $250/bbl with inelastic demand (harvest +200k b/d, jet demand +2% on doubled prices, diesel-intense AI construction) plus record tanker rates = a highly inflationary backdrop. Puplava (2026-SEP-11): refined-product prices put "a lot of inflation in the pipeline" — transportation costs, food — forcing central banks worldwide to raise rates without a Middle East resolution. Gundlach (2026-SEP-16): DoubleLine's model says the next CPI print "will start with a four" and stays above 4% through March on oil alone; WTI $106, $8 diesel ($9.99 in California), Costco rationing motor oil — pre-emptive buying is how inflation spirals; Warsh's 2.00% PCE pledge "failed by his own parlance" if missed. Salzman (Barron's), 2026-SEP-16: distillates are the hot spot — diesel a record $6.31/gal (+86¢ m/m), farmers facing double-digit diesel increases at harvest, and NEADA expecting average heating-oil bills of ~$2,520 this winter vs $1,749 last; J.B. Hunt says fuel swings are "some of the most radical and abnormal" it has seen. Prins (2026-SEP-16): August PPI +5.4% y/y and CPI +3.4%, driven by gasoline +27.4% and diesel +24.1%. Inflation has been above the 2% target (set in January 2012) since early 2021, despite 525bp of hikes. Diesel "bleeds into the whole index," so excluding energy doesn't show the real picture. Gundlach (2026-SEP-16, post-FOMC): "true inflation" (average of import/export prices) 7.8%; core PCE 3.3% trending up from a 2.6 floor; GDPNow strength is inventory hoarding — Costco doubled Kirkland motor-oil prices and is rationing it; expects the October CPI with a 4 handle. Dissent, Harley Bassman on MacroVoices #550, 2026-SEP-17: breakevens at 2.34% say 'no one cares about inflation'; 'we're looking in the wrong place'. He concedes CPI has been 'cooked a little' since the Clinton-era hedonics changes, but says trust, not CPI, is what's driving nominal yields.