The Rebrew Intelligencer
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32
Cost of Living Jumps; Nasdaq Falls 1.88 Per Cent
Labor Department Reports Prices Up 0.6 Per Cent in September and 3.7 Per Cent in the Year.
Gasoline Does the Heavy Lifting, Traders Wager the Federal Reserve May Raise Its Rate, and the Electrical Shares Pay for It.
NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (Special). Stocks fell sharply on Wednesday after the Labor Department reported that the cost of living rose 0.6 per cent in September and stood 3.7 per cent above its level a year ago. The Nasdaq composite lost 1.88 per cent and closed at 26,692.87. The Standard and Poor's average of five hundred stocks dropped 1.11 per cent to 7,718.94. The Dow Jones average of thirty industrials gave up 48.62 points, or 0.09 per cent, and ended at 51,621.48.
The figure matters at the grocer and the filling station before it matters on Wall Street. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said gasoline accounted for more than half of the month's rise. The price of everything except food and fuel, the so-called core, rose 0.3 per cent for the month and 2.6 per cent for the year, a shade above the 0.2 and 2.5 per cent that economists polled by LSEG had looked for.
The reason a hot price report knocks down the price of shares is the Federal Reserve. Traders took the figures as a sign that the central bank, instead of holding its rate where it is, might raise it, and the press of the day reported that bets on a rise grew. A higher rate makes borrowing dearer and makes the future profits of a company worth less today, and that weighs hardest on the houses whose shares are priced on growth. Technology shares and those tied to the electronic brain led the decline.
The Dow, which ended almost exactly where it began, was spared the worst. It had closed on Tuesday at 51,670.10. Three of the eleven groups of stocks in the Standard and Poor's index finished higher, as buyers turned to the sturdier and duller concerns.
By Wire
World Fund Lifts Its Forecast a Notch
The International Monetary Fund Sees 3.1 Per Cent Growth This Year and Names Dear Energy as the Chief Risk.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13. The International Monetary Fund raised its forecast for world economic growth in 2026 to 3.1 per cent, up 0.1 of a point from its July estimate. The Fund puts the richer countries at 2.1 per cent this year and the emerging and developing countries at 3.7 per cent.
It credited resilient advanced economies and heavier spending on the electronic brain for the upgrade. Among the risks it listed was high energy prices tied to the conflict between the United States and Iran, which it said bear hardest on poor countries that must import their fuel.
Rays Even the Series Behind Peralta
Tampa Bay Wins the Second Game, 3 to 1, on Three Runs That Cost Cleveland Nothing to Earn.
TAMPA, Fla., Oct. 13. Freddy Peralta pitched six innings of scoreless baseball for the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night, allowing four hits and two walks and striking out six, as his club beat the Cleveland Guardians 3 to 1 and drew even at a game apiece in the American League championship series. Cleveland had taken the first game.
The decisive inning was the fourth. A ground ball by Ben Williamson got past the Guardians' third baseman, Jose Ramirez, and Tampa Bay scored three runs, all of them unearned. Chase DeLauter's double in the seventh drove in Cleveland's only run. The next three games will be played at Cleveland, beginning Thursday.
Gasoline Up 9.1 Per Cent in a Month
Pump Prices Stand 34.2 Per Cent Above Last September, Labor Department Says.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the gasoline index rose 9.1 per cent in September and is up 34.2 per cent over the twelve months. The broader energy index, which takes in gasoline, electricity and fuel oil, rose 5.2 per cent in the month after a rise of 2.1 per cent in August, and is 20.4 per cent higher than a year ago.
The Bureau said the gasoline index accounted for more than half of the rise in the cost of living for the month, and that the energy index as a whole has risen in each of the last two months.
Strange but True
Pumpkin Said to Top Record by Nearly 300 Pounds
WARREN, R.I., Oct. 10. A pumpkin grown by Ron Wallace of Rhode Island weighed 3,156 pounds on the official scale at a weigh-off here on Saturday, nearly 300 pounds more than the standing world record of 2,857 pounds, a squash grown by Ian Paton of Lymington, England, and set on Oct. 3. Mr. Wallace, who in 2012 became the first man to grow a pumpkin beyond 2,000 pounds, said officials of Guinness World Records had indicated the mark was on track to be verified. The record, if it is confirmed, will have stood for one week.
Pet Iguana Fetched Down After a Week in a Tree
SPRING HILL, Kan., Oct. 7. A pet iguana named Tasslehoff, nine years old, was brought down on Wednesday evening from a tree in the 200 block of West Allen Street after a week at large. He was reported to be some 35 to 45 feet up. Firemen of the Johnson County district took him down with a ladder truck and a catch pole borrowed from the Spring Hill police.
Wall Street
The Market
A Hot Price Report Sinks the Electrical Shares.
The Nasdaq composite closed Wednesday at 26,692.87, down 1.88 per cent. The Standard and Poor's 500 closed at 7,718.94, down 1.11 per cent, and the Dow Jones industrial average at 51,621.48, down 48.62 points, or 0.09 per cent. The day's business was done, as it always is, in time for supper, though not in good spirits.
Shares of companies tied to the electronic brain were sold along with the rest of the technology group, as traders reckoned that a rise in the Federal Reserve's rate was more likely after the price report.
The Editor's Desk
On Prices, and a Pumpkin.
We read the new price figures aloud at breakfast, 3.7 per cent in the year, and remarked that money is the root of all evil. Mrs. Ashby set down the teapot and said that the text is 'the love of money is the root of all evil', First Timothy, sixth chapter, and that we had left out the part about the love. We replied that we have no love of money, merely a regard for it that has been rising at 3.7 per cent. She passed the toast.
Gasoline, we are told, did most of the mischief. We have not bought a tank of it since the nephew Thaddeus drove the Packard into a ditch while consulting his telephone, and we are therefore the only member of the household to have kept our wits about the matter. We are happy to be of use to the Bureau of Labor Statistics should it wish to consult an expert.
Of the Rhode Island pumpkin of 3,156 pounds, we will say only that it is the first thing in this number to have gained more than the price of gasoline, and that Mrs. Ashby has been asked to make a pie of it and has declined.
Letters to the Editor
The Telephone Wants an Update.
Dear Editor: My telephone informs me every morning that it requires an update, and will not tell me of what. I am a patient man, but I have never before been asked to wait upon an appliance. Last week it kept me from the weather for forty minutes, and the weather turned out to be rain. [Do as it asks, and keep an umbrella. ED.]
A Householder, Buncombe Street.
The Cancellation.
Dear Editor: I wished to cancel a magazine I no longer read. I was told I might subscribe by pressing a single button but must cancel by telephone, between the hours of nine and eleven on a weekday, and be kept holding while a recorded lady assured me that my call was important. It was not important enough to answer. [Madam, nothing is. ED.]
A Subscriber, Pendleton Street.
Why Is the Chicken Called a Bundle?
Dear Editor: At the market the other day a bundle of chicken cost me more than a bundle of the same chicken cost my mother, and the clerk said it was due to the CPI. I do not know this gentleman, and I do not like his influence on our poultry. Can the Editor have a word with him?
A Taxpayer, Augusta Road.
Around Town
A Notice.
The Intelligencer has set its clocks forward eighty-five years. Readers will have noticed that this paper has been printed in the style of 1860 and that, from this number, it is printed in the style of 1945. The Editor regards eighty-five years as a short distance, having once walked to Pelzer, and asks that readers bear with any lingering whiskers.
Further to Tuesday's Number.
Our report of the banks stated that nobody could say why Citigroup's shares fell on a quarter that beat expectations. That was our fault and not the market's. Citi's own officers told analysts that revenue from its trading desks, $6.1 billion in the quarter, would fall about 20 per cent in the fourth, perhaps a bit more, which Chief Executive Jane Fraser called ordinary year-end seasonality. Analysts also pointed to $2.6 billion set aside for credit losses, to softer fee income, and to a return on tangible common equity of 11.5 per cent against 13.0 the quarter before. The shares fell about 4 per cent. We should have looked.
The Weather.
No forecast can be had, the barometer being still absent. The parcel's tracking record reported it delivered on Wednesday, and Thaddeus, who had been stationed at the front window, did not see it come, owing to his telephone. Inquiry shows it was signed for at the office of the Evening Clarion across the street. The Editor has declined to go over. Mrs. Ashby will go over.
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