Notes From All Over, Part 2 -- The Inflation Edition -- October 11, 2020

Transportation update. We've hit on this a few times in the past couple of months. 

US transportation capacity hits new lows, "no relief in sight" for pricing -- and yet, here we have it, the transportation trifecta:

• new hardware releases from Apple flooding the market:
• Amazon Prime day (actually two days) this week;
• for early shoppers, the holidays are upon us;

Dodo bird: in you are wondering why your Sunday paper did not show up today, the Bismarck Tribune has moved to a 6-day print schedule. Link here. 

Based on why they are doing this, see the link, they should scrap the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday editions, and roll all four days into a gigantic Thursday edition. Have a special Monday edition for sports -- to wrap-up the weekend, and that's pretty much all readers would need. 

US Treasury cash: literally off the chart. Link here. Don't read the article. Just look at the graph. The story will only confuse you. It was a great article until near the very end. 

Inflation: just what is the story. What's going on. From Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve is determined to push inflation higher from levels it considers dangerously low. 

For that to happen, it must first convince everyone that prices will accelerate in coming years. 

One big problem is that the measures that bond traders and strategists rely on for longer-run inflation expectations can often give conflicting and confusing signals. No one can agree on how best to use or decipher them, with even the Fed seemingly reticent to narrow it down; its economists recently reviewed a cocktail of more than 20 gauges. 

Yet depending on which measure is considered, inflation is still well short of the Fed’s average 2% goal -- or may have already exceeded it. With the Fed planning to keep rates near zero until price pressures re-emerge, it’s a far from academic question. 

The prospect of an abrupt economic reflation lifted yields on U.S. debt to the highest in months this week, skewing the yield curve to near its steepest in four years and bringing forward bets on rate increases. While those bets dipped amid stop-start talks over a stimulus package, their resilience was a timely reminder for traders of what’s at stake in nailing the outlook for inflation.

Re-posting:

If I purposely check the stock market, I post at least a quick note on the blog. I haven't purposely checked the market in several weeks. When it gets crazy on the down side, I quit watching until the dust settles. When it gets crazy on the up side, I check the market hourly, if not more often. 

Today [I believe that was Friday, October 9, 2020], I finally looked when I saw the Xilinx story. I was curious. When did I last check out the market. Doing a google search on the blog the last time I posted the word "Dow" was September 15, 2020.

Wow, that's been almost a month since I checked the market. 

After looking at the quarterly statement I just received from my IRA custodian, it may be safe to going back to looking at the market. We'll see. I'm not going to rush in.