Jeffrey Cleveland

The good news, especially for those folks on Wall Street at least, is that the much-watched core CPI, so it excludes food and energy, was a bit softer than expected.

It was up 0.2% on the month, and it's up 2.6% year-on-year, which is a little softer than expected.

I think that's what markets are reacting to this morning.

I think that keeps the dream alive, Sabri, for rate cuts.

The Federal Reserve, the central bank is waiting for inflation to continue to moderate.

There were some fears that inflation would be a little bit hotter in December after a pretty soft November report.

So the fact that it came in softer than expected is overall good news.

Well, food in general was up quite sharply.

The food index was up 0.7 in December.

Food at home, which I tend to do a lot of food at home myself, that was up 0.7% in December.

That's a big rise in the index.

And food away from home was up as well.

So food, I think, is one area for the average person listening to this

They're not going to be comforted by core CPI being softer.

They're going to look at food and say, hey, no, this is a problem.