The New Benchmark

Week Ahead 7/14-18

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. Last week was devoid of data but not short of drama as TACO went away and an escalation in trade wars came back, however without much fanfare.

More importantly, we have both the White House and monetary officials intent on enabling and creating more inflation with no desire to do anything to defeat it. For decades, investments were all benchmarked against the S&P 500. Is it time for a new benchmark?

We are back with a data heavy calendar on top of the White House drama. Tuesday we get CPI, Wednesday we get PPI and Industrial Production, Thursday we get retail sales, import/export prices, Philly Fed and inventories and Friday we get building permits, housing starts and UMICH.

Let’s dig in.