Executive Summary Turbulence remains the signal feature of 2022 as worries about inflation and the Fed’s reaction to it continue to haunt investors and plague financial markets. Despite four-decade highs in measured inflation, long-run inflation expectations have held fast, keeping an inflation vicious circle from taking hold. As the diminishing threat from COVID helps unsnarl supply and transportation bottlenecks, it will also reduce the potential for expectations to become unmoored. The labor market has been sending encouraging signals for the economy and corporate profit margins. Although payrolls continue to expand at a robust pace and job openings remain near record highs, upward wage pressures appear to be losing momentum. Households have proven willing to spend their excess pandemic savings and maintain a sizable cushion to keep the economy growing near its long-run trend pace. All Is Not Yet Lost Bottom Line: Markets remain volatile, subject to sharp swings upon any data points that portend a shift in the Fed’s tightening campaign. The August CPI report did not change our view that the consensus is underestimating the potential for positive earnings surprises in the next two quarters and we continue to recommend overweighting equities over the next three to six months. Feature Will the real inflation trend please stand up? Financial markets were emboldened by July’s CPI release, which reported a 0.1% month-over-month decline in inflation, 10 basis points below expectations, and demoralized by August’s edition, which reported a 0.1% month-over-month increase, 20 basis points above expectations. Core inflation, which backs out changes in volatile food and energy prices, came in at 0.6% in August after a 0.3% reading in July. In the harsh light of the August release, the July data point looked anomalous to the naked eye after holding between 0.6 and 0.7% in the three previous months. Related Report US Investment StrategyChartbook Equities swooned after the release, but policymakers and economic participants should focus on data trends rather than data points. Though we share in the general disappointment that inflation remains elevated, we continue to expect that headline CPI growth will abate to around 4% over the coming months. The supply of goods and services will increase as COVID’s threat continues to recede, while demand will slacken as the Fed and other major central banks continue to tighten monetary policy. The end of COVID restrictions will help to facilitate the ongoing shift in demand from goods to services. All in all, the underlying trend toward decelerating inflation will not be upended by noisy one-off data points. Stubbornly high inflation prints increase the risk that inflation expectations will become unmoored, feeding a self-reinforcing cycle in which high prices beget even higher prices, but there is no sign yet that they are poised to break out. Persistent inflation also increases the risk that the Fed will overdo the tightening and induce a deeper recession than would otherwise occur. We remain vigilant on both fronts, but believe markets are overestimating the probability of each risk. The charts that follow – tracking COVID’s course, inflation expectations, the labor market, household balance sheets and the outlook for S&P 500 earnings – show the data underpinning our stance. We will abandon our sanguine tactical view if consumers show signs of retrenching, which would torpedo our better-than-consensus growth outlook, or if inflation expectations show signs of becoming unmoored, which would force the Fed to move to throttle the economy immediately. Neither condition has yet been met, however, and we continue to believe that the consensus is underestimating the potential for upside earnings surprises. Chart 1Omicron Has Come And Gone ... Chart 2... With Much Less Of An Impact Than Delta Chart 3The Picture Looks Even Better Outside The US ... Chart 4... Though Ancillary Counts May Not Be So Rigorously Maintained Chart 5Watch This Space Chart 6Consumers Are Still Not Chasing Big-Ticket Items Chart 7Near-Term Expectations Are Way Down ... Chart 8... And Long-Term Expectations Remain Contained Chart 9Steady As She Goes Chart 10We're All Doomed! Chart 11Oh, Wait, Never Mind Chart 12Initial Claims Are Nearly 20% Below Their Mid-July Peak ... Chart 13... And Openings Have Come Only Slightly Off Of Theirs Chart 14Ready, Willing And Able To Keep The Economy Going Chart 15Down, But Not Out Chart 16Margins Remain Elevated ... Chart 17... And Profit Warnings Are Few And Far Between Doug Peta, CFA Chief US Investment Strategist dougp@bcaresearch.com