Fed rate hike appears likely as core prices rise 3.7% annualized over three months through October

A third firm inflation month raises questions about the pace ahead

Core consumer prices rose at a 3.7% annualized rate over the three months through October, leaving little doubt of a December Federal Reserve rate increase, according to The Wall Street Journal’s 10-Point newsletter of Nov. 11. The report said the real concern is not next month’s move but what follows: a third straight month of firm underlying inflation reopens the question of how far and how fast the central bank must go. The newsletter did not specify the size of the expected December increase or the number of increases that might follow.

After weeks of tuning out the Federal Reserve to focus on cracks in the artificial-intelligence trade, investors were jolted on Tuesday, Nov. 10, by a one-two punch of hot inflation data and hawkish Fed talk, The Journal reported. Wall Street’s victory lap on interest rates, the newsletter said, “will have to wait.”

In the report’s account, the December increase was the near-term step and the subsequent path was the larger unresolved issue. The newsletter’s headline framed one more rate hike as looking like “the beginning, not the end,” and its stated concern was what would follow if firm underlying inflation persisted. The report offered no benchmark-rate target, no expected size for the December move and no numerical forecast for increases beyond it. Its conclusion was directional: persistent underlying inflation had made the possibility of a longer series of rate increases relevant again, and a market that had been looking elsewhere was forced to reconsider the central bank’s next steps.

The rate outlook led the newsletter, which The Journal bills as a guided tour of its best coverage. The same edition carried reporting on a furniture founder’s decade-long struggle with shifting U.S. trade policy, a $26 million cyber theft that shook a New Jersey township, Anthropic’s plan to go public next week, model Bella Hadid’s purchase of a Colorado home and a one-man effort to rescue abandoned pop music from obscurity. The newsletter said it was curated and edited by Morgan Smith and Gary Mitchell in collaboration with Editor in Chief Emma Tucker.

Bruce Krinsky has spent a decade perfecting a sweet spot for sales in the American living room: $900 sofas for shoppers wanting an upgrade over IKEA without splurging on Crate & Barrel, Stu Woo reported. That formula turned TOV Furniture, the company Krinsky founded with his wife, into a business pulling in more than $100 million a year. Krinsky, 44, has a high-school education and lives in a Mediterranean-style house in Miami Beach. The Journal reported that achieving the American dream in the Trump era has been an odyssey for Krinsky, who struggled to stay ahead of changing U.S. policy on trade through a decade in which the nation has wrestled with where it wants its everyday things to be made.

Cranbury, N.J., a historic township of about 4,000 people, is reeling from a $26 million cyber theft after it was tricked into wiring money to the wrong place for a land purchase, Scott Calvert reported. At a packed town hall meeting Monday, residents demanded to know how a theft of that scale occurred — and why locals were not told of the incident until Friday, three days after a local election. Police confirmed that the municipality would regain $17.3 million, yet nearly $9 million remains unaccounted for. Beyond the financial hit, the Journal reported, the crime has shaken public trust in local leaders.

Each of Anthropic’s seven founders plans to cash out in the artificial-intelligence company’s initial public offering, leaving them with stakes worth around $18 billion apiece, according to the newsletter. The fortunes underscore the sheer scale of Anthropic’s IPO and the speed at which the company has grown since its 2021 founding, the report said. The company is aiming to go public next week at a valuation of around $1.3 trillion.

Model Bella Hadid has purchased a house in Crested Butte, Colo., for $5.5 million, according to listing agent Channing Boucher of LIV Sotheby’s International Realty. The roughly 2,000-square-foot house was built in 2001 around two coal-miner sheds dating to the early 1900s. Boucher said Hadid, 30, who appeared in October’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show, has been living in the area for several months, and she is dating construction-project manager Nathan Lacy, whose father owns a local construction firm.

By day, London-based Rob Johnson works for a law firm. By night, The Journal reported, he is “the Batman of abandoned pop music,” wielding impeccable but persistent email etiquette to resuscitate songs that sit unheard in CD racks around the world. Over the past decade, he has persuaded record labels to upload scores of releases to streaming services, including singles, B-sides, remixes and bonus tracks from the likes of Belinda Carlisle, Sting, Nicole Scherzinger, ‘N Sync, Sheryl Crow and the Spice Girls — and, in a more obscure success, the Smurfs Greatest Hits.