Inflation is, by definition, a lagging statistic. By the time official CPI prints confirm that price pressures are rising or easing, markets have already spent weeks, often months or even years, trying to anticipate that outcome. That is why fixed income investors spend so much time on market-based measures of inflation expectations. They are imperfect, but they offer a forward-looking view of where inflation is expected to settle across different horizons. So before asking what inflation means for markets today, it is worth starting with how those expectations are measured, and how they help investors and policymakers judge the appropriate central bank response.

The US government, like in many other countries, has a significant amount of debt outstanding. This debt is financed for the majority through the issuance of Treasury securities, which include Treasury bills (short-term), Treasury notes (medium-term), and Treasury bonds (long-term), and these securities serve as key instruments in financial markets. The investors include individuals, corporations, pension funds, the Federal Reserve, and other governments. Broadly, this is referred to the debt held by the public.

There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. This quote by Lenin seems appropriate for what happened last week. The Trump team won by a landslide and has taken the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.