Guild’s Basic Needs Index
How Much Longer Before This Bear Hibernates?
Fed Chair Powell tried to channel Paul Volcker at Jackson Hole. Insiders report that the market’s reaction to his July press conference was to assume that a pivot to easier policy was coming — so he scrapped his prepared remarks for Jackson Hole and instead delivered a short, blunt message
Guild Basic Needs Index: Cooling Off Month-Over-Month
The general economic deceleration visible in the U.S. and global economies is causing investment analysts and corporate managements to begin anticipating a coming recession. (As we’ve noted before, we believe it is already here, though its duration and severity remain to be seen.) While food and housing inflation remained elevated,
Your Expense Receipts Are Giving You More Information Than the Fed, the Government, or the Financial Media
Although we manage investment portfolios for our clients, we also view part of our vocation as being financial educators — something which, through our writing and our media appearances, we’ve been doing for almost as long as our firm has been in existence. We believe investors have a right to
Market Desperately Seeking Reason To Bounce
First, let’s touch on the inflation level revealed by the Guild Basic Needs Index [GBNI] — our in-house, real-world inflation measure which we compile from a simple set of data series covering consumer expenses for food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. We had to adjust the x-axis on our graph: year-on-year,
The Earnings Recession Has Arrived: Is the Economic Recession Coming Next?
We say it often and we will say it again: earnings are the mother’s milk of stock prices. On a market-wide basis, a flat or declining earnings trend almost invariably accompanies a flat or declining trend in stock prices. This doesn’t mean that investors should go completely to cash (particularly
The Fed, Inflation, and the Future of the Dollar
Many thanks to those who joined us on our periodic conference call on March 24. We will be editing the call into bite-sized thematic sections and providing the links to you in coming days, to watch or rewatch. If you would like a copy of the slide deck that accompanied
GBNI Update
As we noted last week, our in-house real-world inflation indicator, the Guild Basic Needs Index, has cooled from last fall’s recent year-over-year high of 31.9%. It now stands at 23.7%. It’s down from the peak, as is to be expected as the pandemic wave recedes. What we think will be
“Transitory Inflation” Gets Less Plausible, “Stagflation” Gets More Plausible: Guild Basic Needs Index Set to Top 32% Year-on-Year Rise
Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released monthly inflation data, showing the consumer price index (CPI) for all urban consumers rising at a 5.4% year-on-year pace. In the world of official CPI reporting in recent decades, that is hot. At the same time, retirees got a reminder of their vulnerability
Guild Basic Needs Index Periodic Update
Goldman Sachs summarized the recent official inflation print: “August core CPI rose by 0.10% month-over-month, and the year-on-year rate declined three tenths to 4.0%… There were again signs of wage-price pass-through, with firmness in restaurant, personal care, and healthcare prices… [We] estimate that the core PCE price index rose 0.25%
Guild Basic Needs Index — Update
Joseph Carson, former chief economist of AllianceBernstein, recently observed on his blog: “CPI inflation of 2021 is not as high as that of the 1970s—False. It’s not possible to only compare inflation numbers across several decades because of significant changes in measurement. The CPI of the 1970s included house price
Guild Basic Needs Index — Update
All-item consumer prices rose 0.9% in June, and 5.4% in the 12-month period, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, capping a string of high monthly readings: Final data are not yet in on all the components tracked by our in-house real-world inflation gauge, the Guild Basic Needs Index.
Guild Basic Needs Index — Update
With May data complete, the Guild Basic Needs Index (GBNI), our proprietary real-world inflation gauge measuring the price of a basket of four essential consumer goods, has backed slightly off April’s 25% year-over-year pace. (You can click here for a more detailed description of how we compile this measure of
March Data Show Inflation Is Still Climbing
A month ago, as inflation talk claimed more investor attention, we revived our in-house inflation index — the Guild Basic Needs Index — which was designed as a simple and straightforward snapshot of the on-the-ground inflation picture faced by consumers, not gamed or massaged by statistical sleight of hand. (If
The Guild Basic Needs Index: Up 15.6% Compared to A Year Ago
Reading time: 3 minutes For many years, Guild has compiled and tracked a neutral inflation index which we call the Guild Basic Needs Index™ (GBNI). We designed it to be a simple analysis of the real state of the inflation experienced by consumers — an unchanging basket, unmanipulated by rebalancings,
