Finimize - 🇺🇸 America ain't cheap

Hi Reader, here's what you need to know for September 14th in 3:06 minutes.

📚 You needed to nail your homework to stand any chance of passing your exams, and that sort of preparation still matters now that you’ve left high school. So join Eve Wealth’s Alana Podrx How To Do Your Due Diligence For Web3 Projects on Friday, and find out how to become a grade-A investor. Grab your free ticket

Today's big stories

US inflation came in higher than expected last month
Here’s how to score a discount on funds run by investing legends – Read Now
Oracle’s cloud venture is showing rays of sunshine

Time For A Long Hike

What’s Going On Here?

Data out on Tuesday showed US consumer prices rose more than expected last month.

What Does This Mean?

Delighted by July’s lower-than-expected inflation, hopeful economists thought August's outlook might keep the good energy going. Well, it didn’t: energy prices might've fallen 5% from the month before following a well-needed 11% drop in gasoline prices, sure, but that boon was offset almost everywhere else. Food prices and medical services were up 0.8%, while accommodation-related costs – which make up a third of overall inflation – saw their highest uptick in about 30 years. All in all, then, US consumer prices rose 0.1% in August, not quite the 0.1% drop economists predicted and enough to mark a worse-than-expected 8.3% gain from August last year.

Why Should I Care?

The bigger picture: Pass the hiking boots.
Energy’s been a key inflation driver in the US this year, but those prices are finally cooling down now. Shame, then, that rising costs everywhere else are fanning the flames instead, signaling that once-concentrated inflation has spread and won’t be as easily extinguished. That might be why markets have now fully priced in a 0.75% hike from the Federal Reserve (the Fed) next week, and taken any previous 0.5% bets completely off the table. Some, predicting a more aggressive strategy, even think there’s a 10% chance the Fed could hike rates by a whole percentage point.

For markets: Investors are fed up.
Investors will be frustrated by the prospect of a longer, more aggressive interest rate campaign designed to rein in increasingly stubborn inflation. After all, the value of any stock is the value of its future earnings discounted back to today – but those future earnings are worth less as interest rates rise. That could be why the S&P 500 fell 2.6% after the news broke, while the Nasdaq – chock-a-block with tech companies that are ultra-sensitive to rate hikes – fell a whopping 3.3%.

You might also like: Why the worst may be yet to come in this bear market.

Copy to share story: https://www.finimize.com/wp/news/us-inflation-comes-in-higher-than-expected/

🙋 Ask a question

Analyst Take

How To Get “Double Discounts” On Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb’s Funds

By Russell Burns, Analyst

If you’ve ever wanted to invest in funds run by investing legends Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb (and score a bargain in the process), now may be the time.

See, at times of market uncertainty, you can sometimes find cheap entry points into the funds of Ackman’s Pershing Square and Loeb’s Third Point.

You just need to know where to look.

So that’s today’s Insight: how to get “double discounts” on Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb’s funds.

Read or listen to the Insight here

Bezos knows how to buy property

Landlords deal with everything from eye-watering management fees to demanding tenants.

So you can’t blame Jeff Bezos for looking into other ways to reap the benefits of owning real estate, especially ones that don’t come with any of the usual headaches.

Looks like he’s found one: the billionaire investor is backing Arrived, where you can buy shares in rental properties from just $100.

That fractional ownership means you can get all the good bits, like regular income and a piece of an appreciating asset, while Arrived looks after all of the operational side for you.

Find out what won Bezos over: check out Arrived’s properties.

Find Out More