Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action news and analysis.

Good afternoon, today is Thursday January 11th and I'm your host Kim Khan. Our top story so far today.

Retail inflation showed some resilience at the end of last year.

The December Consumer Price Index was 0.3% on the month with the annual rate rising to 3.4% from 3.2%.

Economists were expecting a rise at 0.2% on the month.

Excluding food and energy, the core C. P.I also rose 0.2% on the month. Excluding food and energy, the core CPI also rose 0.3%.

That was also a little hotter than the consensus,

although some surveys had at meeting forecasts.

But the annual rate dipped below 4% for the first time since June 2021,

ticking down to 3.9%. Barry Ritholz, Chief Investment Officer of Ritholz's

wealth management, said under the hood the details were more encouraging.

He noted that the BLS said the Index for Shelter continued to rise in December, contributing

over half of the monthly all items increase, but added in the real world shelter measures

were flat or negative. Mohammed Alarian, advisor at Alliance, says the

CPI report will neither change the dominant market narrative nor the policy one but he

says this is however a bit of a warning shot especially given the disinflationary

process gets harder from here as far as Fed expectations are concerned, traders are still

expecting a first quarter-point rate cut to come in March, pricing in a 60% chance.

Six quarter-point cuts are seen through 2024.

Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reed says,

for now at least, markets remain confident that the Fed is about to pivot soon.

But so far, officials have generally been talking about later moves.

...