Portions of Episodic inflation are peaking…
I want to harken back to a phrase Tom Luddy, former Vice Chair of JPMorgan Asset Management, frequently repeats: “less bad is good” (when looking at trends). In other words, when inflation trends become “less bad” investors are likely to view this as a positive inflection.

Yesterday’s CPI report is an example of this. The CPI Core (ex-food and energy) was +0.3% month over month, improving over Feb’s +0.5% and the best reading since September 2021.

  • the rate of change is slowing
  • for reasons we discuss below, this 1st of 3 waves of episodic inflation is peaking
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…Used car prices are rolling over now

The latest March Manheim Used Vehicle Index was published last week. The actual price level peaked in December and has been down 3 consecutive months. And this is slowing down the YoY growth rate of used car prices (down to a more “modest” +25%.)

  • the immense supply chain crunch/chip shortage triggered a record rise in used and new car prices
  • what might surprise investors is “used cars” alone accounted for +1.40% of the rise in CPI
  • prior to 2020, “used cars” was essentially zero percent contributor to CPI
  • “new cars” was another +0.40%
  • so combined autos represented nearly 2.0% of CPI growth in 2021
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