September 17 2022 | Inflation, Oil, IPO’s , Bitcoin, Entertainment, Transportation, US Jobs, Producer Price Index, Banks, Crypto, China, & Office Vacancy

<p>Inflation</p> <p>The market is not liking the CPI report today as the inflation rate of 8.3% topped the expectation of 8.0%. It was down from July's 8.5% rate, but it remains stubbornly high and likely cements a Fed Funds Rate increase of 0.75% at next week's meeting. Energy was down 5.0% in the month and gasoline was down 10.6% in the month, but year over year energy is still up 23.8% and gasoline is 25.6% higher. Food remains one of the major concerns as prices increased 11.4% year over year. Shelter, which occupies close to 1/3 of the CPI, also remains high with the year-over-year gain at 6.2%. With the huge surge in housing prices over the last couple years I continue to believe this category has more room to run over the coming months. I also worry that while energy prices have come down month over month, companies have not been able to effectively offset these costs and more price increases could be on the way. This remains especially true in the transportation services component, which saw a year-over-year gain of 11.3%. Inflation remains a major problem in the economy, but I still believe we can exit 2022 with an inflation rate of around 6% barring a major supply chain disruption or a major spike in energy prices.</p> <p>Oil</p> <p>We keep saying we need to pump more oil here in the US and some people are saying the Biden administration is doing everything it can. In the first 19 months the administration will have leased federal acreage for oil drilling of 130,000. At first glance that may sound like a lot, but it is the lowest amount of acreage leased since President Kennedy in the early 1960s. Do you want to guess what our energy consumption is now compared to 60 years ago?</p> <p>IPO’s</p> <p>With a difficult market in 2022 initial public offerings also known as IPO‘s have really been rather scarce. It has now been over 115 days since the last traditional IPO of more than $25 million. The last time that happened was in 2008. I don’t believe much will be changing for the rest of 2022. At this point