US inflation landed where markets hoped, that should worry investors

July’s US inflation report gave markets precisely for what they were braced. Headline CPI rose 3.4% year-over-year, core CPI came in at 2.5%, both a tenth of a point softer than June, both landing squarely on consensus.

Stocks will likely take this as vindication, but I believe that investors should read it more carefully.

An in-line print sounds reassuring by definition. It confirms the disinflation trend everyone expected continued, removes one obvious catalyst for a September hike, and gives the Federal Reserve room to stay patient a little longer.

All of that is true, but it’s not the full picture.

Energy prices remain elevated specifically because of the ongoing conflict between the US, Israel, and the wider Middle East, a geopolitical variable with no fixed resolution date and no guarantee of stability between now and September’s Fed meeting.

A CPI print that comes in on target while its most volatile input remains hostage to an active regional conflict is not the same as a genuinely stable inflation trajectory. It’s a calm reading sitting on top of an unresolved risk.

The distinction matters enormously, I believe, for how global investors should position from here.

Markets often treat an in-line data point as a green light, when the more useful question is what happens to that same data point if the underlying conditions shift even slightly.

Oil surged more than 20% in July as tensions escalated, then eased as diplomatic efforts around the Strait of Hormuz progressed, both within a single month. A CPI report measures where prices landed after that volatility. It says little about whether the volatility itself has, in reality, ended.

For investors outside the US, this carries direct consequences. Energy-importing economies across Asia and Europe remain exposed to the same geopolitical variable driving the US energy component, regardless of what their own domestic inflation readings currently show.

Worth examining too is what today’s data does and does not tell the Fed.

An in-line report gives policymakers room to avoid an immediate hike, and futures markets will likely price that relief quickly.

The central bank still faces two more inflation readings before its September meeting, and both arrive with the same energy-driven uncertainty hanging over them. A single benign month does not resolve a trajectory question that depends heavily on whether a ceasefire holds, a shipping route reopens fully, or tensions reignite without warning.

Global investors should treat today’s number as confirmation of where inflation was in July, not as a forecast of where it will be in September.

Those are meaningfully different things, and markets have a well-documented tendency to conflate them, particularly in a rally that has already pushed the S&P 500 to repeated record highs this year on comparatively thin justification.

Today’s CPI report was, on its own terms, good news. The mistake would be extending that relief further than the data actually supports.