If you have no clue what the “ECI” in the title is, you’re hardly alone. The Employment Cost Index (ECI) is a quarterly measure of the amount that companies and the government are paying their employees. Usually, this second-tier report barely even garners even a passing mention in the business news, but with the Fed’s recent shift to focusing on inflation as the last missing piece in the rate hike puzzle, some traders have started to pay attention to it. Unfortunately, the increased attention came at a terrible time for the indicator, which printed at just 0.2% q/q, missing the 0.6% growth that economists had been ... (full story)