Folks, we've got several major things to discuss. Number One: the Consumer Poverty Index today, and how the Bureau of Labor Statistics just admitted that their previous inflationary reports were flat out wrong. Number Two: a massive threat to our economy coming from a major world power, number three, the latest on the market and plays for this condition. Let's get right to work.

So here we have another day. In a world where the government is spending Millions upon Millions trying to shoot down endless balloons out of the sky, but just can't seem to focus on getting that inflation down enough. The CPI comes out and it's at plus 0.5 percent on all items for January and plus 6.4 percent on the Year. This Buck the three-month trend of downtrending pricing pressures.

And I don't know if you caught this, but while everyone was busy watching the Super Bowl this weekend, the Bureau of Labor Statistics was busy uncooking the books. I mean uh, correcting the inflationary data for previous months as well. If you go back to the original data they had up yesterday, December was originally reported as negative 0.1 percent, November was reported as plus 0.1 percent, October was reported as plus 0.4 Four percent. Take a look at what is being reported as now now: December has been revised upward to plus 0.1 percent, November to plus 0.2 percent, and October to plus 0.5 percent.

So Not only was January a very hot month, but each of the last three months were adjusted upward as well. and that is a big stinking deal. Remember the big reason markets had rallied in the first place was based around this original inflation number. The original inflationary numbers and now they are coming out as they're not nearly as good as we had thought.

Well, why were they adjusted What happened? Charlie Well, according to the government, the revisions were the result of recalculated seasonal adjustment factors. the model used by the government to strip out seasonal fluctuations from the data. Yeah, of course, blame the seasons. Yeah, sorry.

I put Six Five in my dating profile, but I'm actually only Five three. I don't know what happened. It must be the winter. Come check with me in the summer, then I'll be six feet again.

And this actually has a pretty big implication, folks, as Logan Kane from Seeking Alpha reports Mainly, it implies that inflation is actually running about 1 0.2 percent annually more than we thought. This challenges the massive rallying stocks and Rosy Trader assumptions for what the FED needs to do to stop runaway consumer price increases. Pre-programmed algorithms bought billions in stocks off of these inflation numbers, which pushed up prices in the hours and days after these CPI reports. Trend Following funds, picked up on the bullish bets and piled in behind them.

Then retail investors got in on the action as well, buying loads of call options on stocks like Tesla and Bed Bath and Beyond. So this is the kicker, right? This rally. It came on the back of fudge numbers from the government. It was a lie we were supposed to believe and now it's been revised Opera to be more accurate because oh, seasonal adjustments? uh-huh and the bureau has lost a little legitimacy.

It has left people looking at January 0.5 percent increase have to be thinking to themselves. Okay, but what's the real number? 0.6 0.7 or 0.8 Is it just going to be revised three months from now to show that the number should have been far higher? Remember inflationary revisions. The upside are horrible because it means that not only will the FED have to be more aggressive, but but corporate profits that are being reported right now are actually worse than they appear to be as well because you gotta adjust out for inflation. But what I like to look at is the 1980 CPI that Shadowstats.com shows the 1980 CPI was before the government curved and recalculated the hell out of the CPI to essentially hide the majority of the pricing pressures if we use the 1980 CPI This report put us in the range of about 14 year-over-year inflation that's compared to 6.4 percent on the current CPI.

But 14 inflation would of course make for a lot scarier headline than 6.4 percent, right? And it would make government look a lot worse. and it would make a lot of people in the society coal versus the massive massive changes of policies. Yet the government only goes and says 6.4 percent and even that sounds pretty bad to me folks. But hey, I mean the trend is going down, so we should feel fine, right? at least until they revise it again.

Oh yeah, by down we meant up, Yeah, yeah, we meant up. It's winter, we gotta adjust and you look at where the hottest price pressures are. CNBC Had a nice chart. Eggs are up 70 set pretty soon.

The best way to become a millionaire is going to be owning chickens. Then you got butter up 32 Fuel oil up 27 Utility gas Services 26 Airfare 25 Motor vehicle repair 23 Frozen vegetables 18 Lettuce 17 Public transportation 17 Cereals and bakery products up 15 Pet food up 15 You can't even feed your dog anymore without declaring bankruptcy first. Motor Vehicle Insurance up 14.7 Electricity up 11 Really, really crazy numbers and you go over to some of the main items like rent of primary residence that's up 8.6 percent year over year. These are disastrous numbers for the average household and there's a lot of people in pain right now, right? Okay, so I want to go over to Russia and a new threat that I'm seeing Bloomberg Just ran a very insightful piece headline for Fear or Money Consumer: Giants are staying in Russia And if you remember during the beginning of the invasion about a year ago, there was this idea that Western companies and specifically American companies had all withdrew from the region and people sold stock bucks with large operations there.

And indeed, a lot of companies reported complete losses on their Russian operations in companies like Starbucks were turned into crappy Russian copycats like stars. Sure, a lot of companies left. A lot of companies also decided to stay in one way or the other, and now that things are starting to escalate again, they may end up being nationalized or forced to close at a significant loss under some new Russian policies. In fact, if you go on don't fundwar.com there's about 72 major U.S companies that are still operating in Russia.

There's about 67 who have just barely begun scaling back, and there's about 295 that have withdrew or suspended operations, but many of those even still have plants or property in. Russia. In terms of well-known companies that are still pretty damn fully operational in Russia you have Abbott Laboratories Carl's Jr or Jill Cloudflare, Colgate Palmobile, the company that makes that great toothpaste. Domino's Pizza Eli Lilly Hard Rock Cafe Hilton Hyatt Johnson and Johnson Kraft Heinz Kimberly Clark match Group which owns Tinder which Believe It or Not Tinder is still operating in the region.

You have Medtronic Mundeleis, Nabisco Mark Pfizer Procter Gamble Snapchat and Subway. In terms of still operating but trying to scale back, you have alphabet: Adobe Caterpillar, Coca-Cola Deer, GE Goldman Sachs Herbalife Key Log Microsoft Pepsi Phillip Morris and Whirlpool. Here's the problem with this: so Russia's economy is actually not doing too bad. It's coming back pretty quickly, which has helped a lot of these companies that have stayed in the region.

The problem though, is that these companies are going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place very very soon. Groups that have been open about their choice to stay such as Colgate Procter Gamble and L'Oreal have a complicated balance to strike. They must protect their bottom lines and local staff retain a foothold in a Major Market and not come across as morally compromised even as they pay taxes to the Kremlin. another Point Here, companies selling food or personal care products and really other products as well also run a higher risk of being inadvertently pulled into the war effort, especially if Russia switches to a wartime economy.

So if Western companies get further pulled into supplying for the war effort via taxes or literal supplies for the war effort, that's going to greatly complicate their ability to operate in the United States And the problem is, if they want to go and leave now, the government requires a 50 discount on any sale, and if companies try to quietly strip operations, then the Kremlin is fighting back on. Thursday Carlsberg Warned of the risk that Russian authorities could nationalize a business to keep its Workforce at pre-war levels if they suspect it is being deliberately stripped of value. In response to this claim, Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov pointed to the labor laws in place to protect workers In Russia. It's a lengthy process he added.

So you have this Dynamic here where many, many major U.S and overall Western companies are operating in Russia paying taxes to Russia and if Russia escalates the war further may be forced into supplying for Russia During an even more contentious situation, and those companies are going to be faced with a choice, they're going to have to either withdraw for a massive, massive loss or face ramifications from customers in the US or perhaps even government authorities. And the reason this is relevant is because Russia is preparing for a ramp up of fighting in the spring and that's likely to put a new height and focus on the many companies that have skated by thus far. Now let's get specifically into the market in place. so inflation or no inflation markets just don't seem to care.

While I was shooting this video, markets were already about to fully brush off the original CPI reaction and head back upward. This is a market where players aren't super focused on the inflationary data or really even the FED. They are focused on the next stage. Remember, there are several stages of a Fed pivot.

First you have the Slowdown of rate hikes. That's the stage we're in right now. Markets think we have two more 25 basis point hikes coming March and May And then the next stage is the pause where we'll stay at the peak rates for several meetings. Peak Expected to be at around 5 to 5 25 and then all of a sudden you get to the third stage, which is rate Cuts Rate Cuts Happen when well markets think the end of the year early to late fall and this inflation data being a little bit hotter than expected alongside a lot of the revisions from the previous three months.

Well, so far, it's not convincing people that the FED isn't going to follow through with this. Oh, overall projection. Even though again, the FED is saying there's no way we cut rates in 2023 Markets are like, yeah, okay you say that, but we don't believe it. We don't believe it at all.

You're going to cut. You're going to cut like a barber in a barber shop, cutting some really, really long hair. Finally, let's go ahead and talk palantir. So you got palantir waking up on well taken earnings I Can't remember the last time I was able to say that, but it was up about 15 while I was shooting this video.

and the numbers on earnings were good. but I Can't say they were totally insane. The main points were that they were profitable for the first time in the fourth quarter and they expect 2023 to be their first ever profitable year. Which I mean that's really, really good for this Market condition.

Not insane when you look at their previous projections in terms of their overall growth trajectory. but hey, you know what profitable quarter profitable you're coming? Those are great and is in stark contrast to the massive, massive share price that has dropped like a rock the last couple of years. I Think what really happened was that markets are speculating on a potential takeover CEO Alex Carp said I think there's going to be a lot of interest in Us in buying our software and potentially in buying us. Carp told analysts on a call after Palantir reported its earnings on Monday but we are pretty focused on our product, which is us now in public markets.

If a company isn't consistently showing insane profitability, people sell and the company gets devalued. if the macro environment goes down massively, people sell and the company gets devalued. Further, both of those things have hurt Palantir. But when good companies with a really, really good product get discounted on public markets, maybe the public doesn't like them, but they start becoming massive merger and acquisition targets.

You start getting bigger players. think, hey, wait, we can buy their entire company and not have to compete with them. Or we could just buy out their entire company, not have to build out our own software capabilities. And that's the calculus that Corp is expressing here.

Hey, we have the product. The public markets may not like us, but because we're down so much, that means we're a prime candidate for a buyout. And buyouts usually happen at a premium, which is why you're starting to see people buy up the shares. And in my opinion, Palantir would probably go for a decent amount more than this.

and it's possible that if they do get bought out and he's not just pulling a Elon Musk fund secured sort of situation, then it would be for a much much higher price. So anyways, that's all we have got for you today. Make sure to hit that ravishing like button and subscribe and sign up for our free newsletter list Our free research reports that come out every Sunday I'll put the link to that down below. Have a good one folks and we will see you in the next video.