The price-tag gremlins are back
S&P Global’s surveys are flashing a familiar warning: companies are once again willing to pay more when supplies get tight. If that sounds a little like the pandemic era, that’s because it is — just with fewer toilet paper panic buys and more corporate grumbling.
Why investors should care
This is the kind of setup that can quietly make life harder for stocks. When businesses have to pay more for raw materials or hard-to-find inputs, they usually have three choices:
- eat the cost and watch margins shrink
- pass it on to customers and risk demand softening
- do a little bit of both, which is finance’s version of “I’m fine”
Either way, sticky inflation is not the Fed’s favorite plot twist. If price pressure stops cooling, rate-cut fantasies get pushed farther out, and risk assets tend to get a little less smug.
The bigger picture
The headline here isn’t just that prices are high — it’s that scarcity is still giving sellers leverage. That can keep inflation stickier than investors want, especially if supply chains get weird again or demand holds up longer than expected.
Big picture: if companies are paying more just to keep shelves stocked and factories humming, inflation isn’t out of the woods — it’s still somewhere in the underbrush with a flashlight.