The Fed's favorite inflation number finally blinked.
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Above the Fold Inflation cooled, and the market barely noticed The Federal Reserve's favorite inflation gauge finally gave some ground. The PCE price index for August eased to 3.4 percent over the past year, down from 3.7, and the core measure that strips out food and energy slipped to 3.0 percent, both a little cooler than economists had penciled in. That is the most encouraging inflation reading in months. Wall Street mostly shrugged. The S&P 500 still slipped on the day and closed out a losing September, the Dow fell nearly 5 percent for the month, and only the Nasdaq managed a small monthly gain while bond yields stayed up near multiyear highs.  The cooler number is the part of this that actually reaches your kitchen, because it means the dollar in your pocket is losing ground a bit more slowly than it was. The market's temper is a separate animal, and this week it stayed cranky about high yields even as the inflation news improved. I watch the gauge, not the tantrum. One soft month does not end the fight, prices are still climbing north of three percent a year, but the direction turned the right way for once, and that is worth noting without throwing a parade. From Washington The December deadline that can cost you 25 percent With the fourth quarter now open, one date belongs circled on the calendar of anyone holding a traditional IRA or 401(k): December 31. That is the deadline to take your required minimum distribution, the sum the government makes you pull out of tax-deferred retirement accounts each year once you reach 73. Skip it, or take out too little, and the penalty runs a stiff 25 percent of the shortfall, though it falls to 10 percent if you fix the miss within two years. The amount comes from a plain formula, last year's ending balance divided by a life-expectancy factor the IRS publishes, which at 73 sits around 26.5. Two wrinkles are worth knowing. Your very first RMD can be delayed until April 1 of the year after you turn 73, but stacking two withdrawals into one year can bump you into a higher bracket, so the delay rarely pays. And if you give to charity, sending the money straight from the IRA counts toward the RMD and skips the income tax entirely. I watched clients save real money every December doing exactly that. The rules sit at the IRS RMD guidance. Money only, no politics.
Tomorrow Today The dead zone is running out of places to hide  A phone signal everywhere, with no tower in sight, is quietly turning real. SpaceX's Starlink has lofted more than 650 small satellites that beam straight to an ordinary handset, no special gadget needed, and the T-Mobile service riding on them now reaches across more than 500,000 square miles of the United States that never had coverage. It works on about sixty phone models people already carry, in two dozen countries. The catch is speed. For now it carries text messages and thin trickles of data, nowhere near enough for video. For anyone who drives through empty country, keeps a cabin well off the grid, or just wants a lifeline when the car dies past the last tower, that is a real comfort. The money lesson is the usual one. The company behind most of this is privately held, the public names in the race trade on enormous promises and lurch on every launch, and a text from the middle of nowhere is a marvel that is still a long way from a steady profit. Enjoy the coverage. Keep any wager on the stocks small. The service is detailed at T-Mobile's satellite rollout. The Five Five things worth a minute
The Long View A good number in a bad mood This week handed us a small, real piece of good news, inflation cooling faster than expected, and wrapped it inside a sour market that spent its days fretting about bond yields and closing a red September. The two things sat right next to each other, and the mood took all the attention. It usually does. I learned a long while back to pull the number apart from the noise around it. A cooler inflation reading does something concrete for a household. It slows the quiet erosion of every dollar you hold, stretches the savings a little further, lets a fixed income keep more of its footing. The market's bad temper, by contrast, does nothing to your life unless you let it, by scaring you out of a sound plan or into a hasty one. Across thirty-five years the people who came out best were the ones who could hear a good number through a loud, gloomy day and weigh it on its own. The direction of prices touches your wallet. The direction of the market's mood this afternoon does not. Mind what you keep.
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