Inflation

• Mar 19, 2026
• finance

Modeling Inflation: Pricing Inflation-Linked Products

Inflation eats your money. Slowly, usually, but sometimes fast. If you hold a regular bond, inflation erodes the value of every coupon and the principal repayment. Index-linked bonds solve this by tying payments to an inflation index like the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the US or the Retail Price Index (RPI) in the UK. Chapter 71 of Wilmott’s book looks at how to model inflation and price these products. The answer turns out to be messier than you might hope.

• Feb 26, 2026
• investing

Investing Psychology Chapter 8: Debunking the Money Myths

We’re nearing the end of Tim Richards’ “Investing Psychology.” In Chapter 8, he tackles the myths that keep us trapped in bad financial habits.

• Nov 15, 2025
• non-fiction

Free to Choose Chapter 9: The Cure for Inflation

Take a five-dollar bill out of your wallet. Now cut a rectangle of the same size from a glossy magazine. Both are pieces of paper. Both have pictures and numbers on them. One can buy you lunch. The other is garbage. Why? That question – why green paper has value – is where the Friedmans begin their chapter on inflation. And the answer is stranger than you might think.

• Apr 14, 2019
• Economics

Trading Economics: Final Thoughts and Key Takeaways From the Book

This is the final post in a 14-part series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).

• Apr 09, 2019
• Economics

Monetary Statistics, Money Supply, and Quantitative Easing Explained

This is post 9 in a series on Trading Economics: A Guide to Economic Statistics for Practitioners & Students by Trevor Williams and Victoria Turton (Wiley Finance, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-118-76641-5).

• Apr 08, 2019
• Economics

RPI vs CPI, Price Indices, and How Inflation Targeting Works

So you know what inflation is and what causes it. But how do you actually measure it?

Turns out there’s more than one way. And the differences between those measurements matter a lot more than you’d think.

• Apr 07, 2019
• Economics

Inflation Explained: History, Causes, and Why Prices Only Go Up Now

Milton Friedman once said: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.”

That’s one of the most quoted lines in all of economics. And it’s a great starting point for understanding what inflation actually is, where it comes from, and why it matters so much.

• Mar 06, 2019
• book-retelling

The Number: Why the Consumer Price Index Is Way More Important Than You Think

This is part 6 of my series on Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service by Michael Lewis.

Most chapters in this book have a person at the center. A scientist, an engineer, a government worker doing something remarkable. This chapter is different. John Lanchester’s essay is about a number. Just one number. And by the end, you’ll understand why that one number matters more than almost anything else the government produces.

• Jan 29, 2019
• personal-finance

Investing Psychology Chapter 8: 10 Money Myths That Are Costing You

Chapter 8 of Investing Psychology is where Tim Richards takes everything from the book and turns it into a myth-busting session. Ten myths. All of them things most people believe. All of them wrong. Or at least, way more complicated than we think.

• Jan 11, 2019
• finance

EM Rates: Inflation, FX Pass-Through, and When Central Banks Pivot

Previous: EM Rates and the Fed Cycle

In the first half of this chapter, we talked about how the monetary policy cycle works in EM and how it mirrors (but isn’t identical to) the US cycle. Now we get to the really juicy stuff: why inflation behaves so differently in EM, how to forecast it, and when to actually put trades on around central bank pivots.