October CPI Preview And How To Trade It: A Shutdown Ghost, A Health Insurance Cliff, And The Print That Decides December

For once, nobody will be able to argue about the annual inflation rate on CPI day, for the simple reason that there won't be one.

Tuesday's October CPI (8:30am ET) is the first report to lap last year's government shutdown, when the BLS never collected October prices at all. No October 2025 index means no year-over-year headline or core print, and so the entire market will be trading one number: core CPI month-over-month, to the second decimal, as usual.