Stocks are flat in the early going after the latest inflation data hit the tape. More on that in a minute.
Meanwhile, Treasuries are flat...gold and silver are flat...and the dollar is? You guessed it. Flat! Oil is up a bit.
On the news front...
Inflation was front and center on Wall Street’s mind today. Economists expected the Consumer Price Index to rise 0.6% in August, and the core CPI to gain 0.2%. The actual numbers? Plus-0.6% and +0.3%. That pushed the year-over-year inflation rate up a bit to 3.7%. The YOY core rate dropped to 4.3% from 4.7%.
Bottom line? Not as bullish as investors would’ve hoped for. But not terrible, either. I still think the Federal Reserve is likely to stand pat for a bit and gauge the impact of past interest rate hikes. Its next policy meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday (Sept. 19-20).
Remember that Arm Holdings (ARM) Mega-IPO I wrote about a little while back? Today is the day the SoftBank Group (SFTBY) spinoff happens. SoftBank spent $32 billion buying Arm seven years ago, and hopes to float up to 10% of the company at a price of $47 to $51. That would value the company at $54.5 billion.
Investors are paying a LOT of attention to the deal – and the bevy of Wall Street investment banks taking part in the Initial Public Offering – because they want to see how strong deal interest is. We’ve only seen $14 billion in US IPOs this year, a huge decline from $244 billion at the same point in the record year of 2021.
Not many surprises in the iPhone 15 rollout event yesterday from Apple (AAPL). Investors largely expected a shift to a USB-C charging standard from Lightning, a titanium-encased model, better cameras, and faster processors. And that’s what we got. Time to start the countdown to the 16 I guess!
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un praised Russian president Vladimir Putin during a meeting at a space facility in Russia, then planned to view the Russian Pacific Fleet at the port of Vladivostok. Always colorful with language, Kim said Russia would “win a great victory in the sacred struggle to punish the band of evil that aspires to hegemony and feeds on expansionist illusions.” Alrighty, then.
