Travis Hoium

Inflation is back and Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now.

Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

I'm Travis Hoey.

I'm joined today by Rachel Warren and our substitute for Lou Whiteman, Tyler Crowe.

Guys, we're going to talk a lot about inflation today.

And before you think that this is going to be a boring episode, we're going to tie this to what this means to investing, because inflation is not all that fun.

I don't like it when prices go up.

I don't think anybody really does.

But it really matters to what's going to happen to the market.

So we're going to try to...

piece all this together.

The thing that came out earlier this week, we'll get to PPI in just a second, but CPI came out earlier this week.

That's the Consumer Price Index.

This is what you and I feel when we go to the grocery store or we fill up our gas tank.

Inflation, Rachel, was 3.8% in the month of April.

That was hotter than expected and much higher than the kind of 2% or 3% that the Fed would like inflation to be at.

And things are really picking up.

Energy prices were up 6.1%.

Vehicle maintenance is up.

Food is up.