Inflation: Back on the Menu

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Wednesday, Dec. 11. The Bottom Line segment of today’s podcast starts at (4:17) for listeners who want to skip ahead.

State of Play

Stocks dropped yesterday for the second straight day. As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0640, all is quiet as we await the next inflation datapoint at 0830:

• Stock index futures are effectively unchanged. S&P 500 and Nasdaq are pointing to a gain of 0.2%, which is basically within the margin of error;

• Commodities are moving a bit higher, though still range bound. WTI crude oil is up 1% to move north of $69/barrel. Copper is down 0.5%;

• Cryptos aren’t doing anything. Bitcoin is up <1% to trade around $98,300;

• Bonds aren’t moving either. The 2-year yields 4.17%. The 10-year yields 4.24%.

Today’s Known Events

It’s all about inflation today. The Consumer Price Index is out at 0830. Economists who were surveyed expect:

• Month-over-month headline CPI of 0.3% month-over-month versus 0.2% last month;

• Annualized CPI of 2.7% (2.6% last month);

• MoM Core CPI of 0.3% (0.3%);

• Annualized Core CPI of 3.3% YoY (3.3%).

(‘Inflation Back on the Menu’ by Author via Grok AI)

There are some earnings as well:

• Photronics (PLAB 0.00%↑), one of our ‘undiscovered’ AI chip names, just reported earnings. There don’t seem to be any analyst estimates for this stock but the news was apparently good as PLAB is up 9% in the pre-market;

• Macy’s (M 0.00%↑) also reports before the open at 0930;

• Adobe (ADBE 0.00%↑) reports after the close at 1600.