Best not to put too much stock in U.S. CPI report for November

The U.S. inflation numbers in November looked supremely encouraging, with the annual headline rate coming in 0.4 percentage points less than expected. But don’t get too happy about them yet.

It’s the first consumer price report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since the U.S. government shutdown ended: October’s figures vanished into the void because the agency was “unable to retroactively collect these data.”

The BLS added that November’s CPI “did not include 1-month percent changes for November 2025 where the October 2025 data are missing.” It also said that certain survey data were “carried forward to October 2025 from September 2025.”

Evercore ISI’s Krishna Guha said it appears the BLS “put in zero inflation in multiple categories” when calculating housing inflation in some cities.

In other words, it’s a noisy report. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell once described setting interest rates as “navigating by the stars under cloudy skies.” With November’s CPI report, the stars aren’t just obscured by clouds — they could be mirages, unidentified flying objects, a seagull that picked up an LED light from the beach.

Nonetheless, investors celebrated the numbers. The CPI report, along with a 10.2% surge in Micron shares on the back of an expectation-busting earnings report, lifted major indexes.

Perhaps it’s the holidays suffusing the air with unbridled cheer. Or maybe it’s all rather like having a feast during Christmas — the calories only count in the new year.

— CNBC’s Sean Conlon contributed to this report.