221–230 of 918 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heat pumps are 2 to 4 times more efficient, and if you are in MA you can get upto a $10,000 rebate and 0% loan when purchasing a heatpump. Why would you stick with oil heat? Even if it drops to $2 it will be much cheaper to have a heatpump.
In MA you are paying through the nose on labor to install though. That rebate evaporates pretty quickly, still a 5 figure job.
So the year over year CPI increase each month this year (starting from January) was 7.5%, 7.9%, 8.5%, 8.3%, 8.6%, 9.1%, 8.5%. So this value has been jumping around a bit as it has been going up. This drop is being taken as good news -- but I worry whether this is really a meaningful drop or whether we are just over interpreting what could be a fundamentally noisy metric?
Corn seems to be a good leading indicator here[1]. Cash bids were $4 in 2019, $5 in 2020, $6 in 2021, $7 at the start of 2022, $9 when the war in Ukraine broke out, down to $8 in June, and now at $7.50 where it has remained stable at since the beginning of July. Which suggests that things are indeed slowing. [1] Which likely ends up being a proxy for oil, but as a farmer I watch food commodities much more closely.
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Seems like EV uptake rate, while still just a fraction of total sales, is probably high enough to contribute to demand destruction. Gas prices have come down pretty fast. I wonder if EV adoption goes fast enough that we'll see a period of time when gas prices just crater for a while. A sweet spot of owning an ICE vehicle, but then gas stations will start to close up and ICEV owners could face the same problem EV owne…
EVs are ~1% of cars and ~5% of new car sales. It seems like we have another 5 years until those scale effects start to really kick in.
Core inflation is +5.9% YoY (lower than expectations) I expect the Fed to declare "mission accomplished" via a 50 bps hike in September if the Aug CPI print is lower.
Aren't they in "data dependent" mode?
>So what are we going to be looking at? You know, we’ll be looking at the incoming data, as I mentioned, and that’ll start with economic activity. Are we seeing the slowdown that we — the slowdown in economic activity that we think we need, and there is some evidence that we are at this time.
Economic activity data is likely to continue to worsen between now and the September FOMC meeting, so I believe there's a high likelihood that they are opting for +50 bps rather than +75 bps.
This would signal that we are getting close to the end of the tightening cycle. You can see it in the price of risk assets today after the CPI data release - everything is up (markets are forward looking).
It's a relief to see actual price drops in fuel and transport services hit before the end of the Summer travel season. Barring additional oil disruption, we can hope to see other prices (e.g. food) correct -- or at least stop growing so fast -- at a lag.
Prices are sticky, food prices won't be coming down much, if at all. It's not a constant consumer market fluctuation like oil/gas.
My experience is that prices went 100% - 150% up. Things I care about went double, no amount of statistics engineering can change this fact. Fuel prices along, while it came down a little, they are still way high.
It is interesting, at best, aggravating mostly, that folks are still adamant that we can apply the heuristics of the past to conditions in the present. Evidence suggests we cannot. Governments, government bodies and other vested interests around the globe are covertly managing (taking liberties with the "numbers"?) the downward spiral in order to maintain some semblance of control and not have everything derail too q…
Unless they just redefined inflation. I'll believe it when the prices stop jumping. Also, given that the government is ultimately responsible here. And we pay taxes to the government. You'd think they might cut us some slack on that. Having fucked up and all.
So the year over year CPI increase each month this year (starting from January) was 7.5%, 7.9%, 8.5%, 8.3%, 8.6%, 9.1%, 8.5%. So this value has been jumping around a bit as it has been going up. This drop is being taken as good news -- but I worry whether this is really a meaningful drop or whether we are just over interpreting what could be a fundamentally noisy metric?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The inflation on food due to high fuel and fertilizer prices won’t really kick in until October -> February during harvest. Next year food will be far higher, largely due to - people skipping fertilizer a second year in a row - the feed price increases from year prior will impact next years meat - much of the cow herds have been reduced due to hay prices skyrocketing (but beef rates staying far lower, due to sell off…
I'm not trying to be glib or intentionally controversial, but: is this a "market correction" for beef not really being as sustainable at recent consumption levels? Is it a bad thing if beef becomes significantly more expensive?
I don't personally think rising beef prices are an issue, though. Nobody is going to starve because they're being priced out of a steak. I will be more concerned if we eventually begin to run short of beef-alternatives, though.