The consumer price index climbed 3.7% in September because gasoline got expensive during a war. Shocking stuff. Really caught the algos off guard.
Financial journalists summarized this development in chart form. One chart. As if distilling inflation into a colorful bar graph makes you less broke. The chart probably has red and blue sections. Maybe some orange. Definitely a legend in the corner that explains what the colors mean, which is thoughtful because without it you'd just be staring at rectangles like a f*cking toddler.
Here's what the chart won't tell you: Iran and oil prices have been connected since before your grandfather bought his first Treasury bond. Wars make energy expensive. Energy makes everything expensive. This is not graduate-level economics. This is Sesame Street with a Bloomberg terminal.
But retail traders needed the chart. They opened the article. They scrolled to the graphic. They nodded slowly while pretending the Y-axis meant something to them. Then they bought calls on an oil ETF they can't pronounce and set a stop loss at a price that guarantees maximum pain.
The breakdown shows energy drove the increase. Gasoline specifically. Because when missiles fly near the Strait of Hormuz, premium unleaded doesn't stay cheap. This is the kind of insight that costs twelve dollars a month on Substack or zero dollars if you've ever looked at a map.
September's number means the Fed will do whatever it was already going to do. Traders will react as if this changes everything. It changes nothing. The chart will get shared four thousand times by people who think technical analysis works and astrology doesn't.
Inflation went up because war makes things cost more, and you needed a chart to confirm it.
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
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