The elusive soft landing

The PCE, or personal consumption expenditures index, might be more important to the Federal Reserve when weighing decisions about rate raises. It's near a 40-year high.

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Another tough number.
Welcome to the Know the Difference Minute for Thursday, June 30th.
When it comes to inflation, the most-referenced metric is CPI, or the Consumer Price Index. That’s sitting at a 40-year high at 8.6%.
There’s another inflation gauge that might be more important—at least to the Federal Reserve when weighing decisions about rate raises. It’s the PCE, or personal consumption expenditures index. A fresh number arrived today—and at 4.7%, is also close to a 40-year high. It slid in a tenth of a point under expectations but that’s not much comfort.
Consumers are living it through rising gas and food prices. No surprise, the consumer confidence index fell Tuesday to the lowest reading since February 2021.
The Fed is trying to engineer a soft landing. With today being the last day of the 2nd quarter, today’s data is more proof that it is going to be a very difficult task.
I’m Dave Spano from Annex Wealth Management. That is your Know the Difference Minute.