The June data was the last headline inflation rate to benefit from easy 2022 comparisons. By contrast, the July data to be released in mid-August is likely to bounce upward and stay there for another month. Again, this is all due to what we know happened back in the summer of 2022 and tells us nothing about inflation’s path forward. These anomalies are due to what economists call "base effects," since old data gets equal weight with new data in year-over-year comparisons. Market participants, however, know that more recent data is much more valuable than year-old data. To strip out the base effects, market ... (full story)