US Inflation Hit 3.7%. Gasoline Did Half the Work.
September CPI rose 0.6% in a month, and gasoline drove more than half of it. Core inflation barely moved. Your spreads will notice the next release.
News commentary and opinion. Not financial advice.
What happened
On 14 October 2026 the US Bureau of Labor Statistics published the Consumer Price Index for September. The all items index rose 0.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis, after 0.4% in August. Over 12 months it was up 3.7% before seasonal adjustment.
Gasoline did most of the lifting. Its index rose 9.1% in September. In the words of the release, it accounted for over half of the monthly all items increase. The energy index as a whole rose 5.2%.
Strip out food and energy and the picture is calmer. Core CPI rose 0.3% in September, the same as in August, and 2.6% over 12 months. Food prices were unchanged on the month. Shelter rose 0.4%. The next release, for October, is scheduled for 10 November 2026 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
Primary source: BLS Consumer Price Index, September 2026
The roast
A 3.7% headline makes a great thumbnail. Read one line further and most of the month was a fuel bill. Core inflation did exactly what it did in August. That is not a calm economy. It is also not the five-alarm fire the headline sells.
Then come the people who "called it". Every CPI morning the same Telegram channels post two opposite predictions an hour before the release. One of them is right. That one gets screenshotted. The other one gets deleted. It is the same routine we saw while testing signal providers with our own money.
The quiet winners of release day are some of the brokers. At 8:30 a.m. Eastern the spread on a major pair can widen several times over. Slippage on a stop order can turn a planned loss into a bigger one. None of that shows up in the "from 0.0 pips" banner.
Why it matters to traders
- Headline and core told different stories this month. Our view: read both before you read anyone's take on what the Fed will do next. Our central banks guide explains why policymakers lean on core numbers.
- Release minutes are when execution quality shows. Our slippage and latency guide explains what happens to an order in that window. Our broker reviews include slippage we measured on high-impact news.
- Put 10 November 2026, 8:30 a.m. ET, in your calendar. Check your broker's spread on that morning against its marketing. The source numbers are in the BLS release.
Disclaimer: This is news commentary and reflects the opinion of ForexRoasted. It is not financial or investment advice. Trading CFDs and Forex involves substantial risk and is not for every investor.