A few reports of interest (to me), from this past week.
CPI
Real earnings
Petroleum
Producer Price Index
Retail Sales
The inflation report was rather benign and met expectations. The oddity was in the CPI-W, which directly relates to C.O.L.A. It was a mild 2.5% y/y. The previous projection was a 2.6%~2.7% cola, which now moves a bit down to 2.5%~2.7%.
The Real Earnings moved up and is +1.2% above one year ago. As this is inflation adjusted, the earnings are +3.7% above one year ago.
The petroleum report shows an increase in both crude and distillate supplies. Gasoline supply edged a shade lower.
Produce Price Index was rather ugly, with a substantial jump across the board. Just as last month's PPI foreshadowed a benign July CPI... August will be a wake up call, imo. On top of that, the forecast for PPI is even higher... going forward.
I am not exactly happy, as my current CPI is 3.0% and possibly climbing, with COLA far behind.
The current status of the report card...
Advance Retail Sales

Not a bad report on the surface.
OPINION time:
In a previous post I questioned the accuracy of some government reports. The retail sales would be one example. The issue being with revisions. Below is a snapshot of cumulative revisions of advance sales going back about 2 1/2 years. Revisions are not unheard of, but the pattern is suggestive of something being off.
The pattern HAD been the previous couple of months being revised downward, which inevitably shows a brighter current report. This had been almost a monthly occurrence, of the past couple of years. Now it should be noted that historically, April has been an across the board revision of everything.
Going forward, it will be interesting to observe if the revision pattern continues, although the monthly pattern has broken towards upward revisions for previous month's data, which would suppress the joy of a current report. It does seem suspicious, imho.
While the overall picture seems okay, with the exception of the PPI... a glimmer of hope seems to be in the PPI being a month blip, as following forecasts indicate flat to negative.