Over the later part of spring, we saw peak fear build in consumer pessimism in the stock market, with prices bottoming  in June, inflation peaking in July, and an evolving monetary policy stance from the Federal Reserve. Tomorrow, Tuesday  September 13^th, we will get month over month Core CPI inflation scheduled for release at 8:30 EST. For the better part  

of a year, month over month inflation in the U.S was rising at the rate of 0.80% each month – resulting in what came out  to approximately 9% inflation year over year reached in July. Last months reading on August 10^th came in at 0.0%, below  consensus forecasts of 0.20%. A month prior, July 7^th’s inflation reading came in at 1.3% for the month – marking what  economists and investors referred to as “peak inflation”. With over 18 months of consecutive positive month over  month inflation readings, the market is gearing up for what is expected to be tomorrows first negative month over  month inflation reading since the start of the covid pandemic in spring of 2020. The consensus forecast for this reading is  -0.1%. Meaning that economists are actually forecasting deflation for prices over the past 4 weeks. The market will  respond to this reading by attempting to predict the Fed's response. All eyes have recently been on the Fed. Since 2016  when the Fed raised rates for the first time since the financial crisis, we have not experienced a market like the one we  have throughout the most of this year. 

Going back to the meeting scheduled for September 21st. The Federal Reserve's Summary of Economic Projections,  which includes the Fed's federal funds rate increase, will be released at the same time as Jerome Powell's press  conference on Wednesday at 2 p.m. The overnight rate at which banks lend and borrow from one another to  satisfy reserve requirements set by the Fed, is known as the federal funds rate. While some banks require reserves,  others have extra reserves they can lend, at the current rate of 2.33%. (the current federal funds rate). A bank can seek a  loan from the Federal Reserve if it is under its reserve requirement and unable to locate the proceeds of an overnight  loan from another bank. In the opposite situation, if a bank has extra reserves and cannot find another bank to lend  them to, they may also loan them to the federal reserve. When the Fed declares that they will "raise the federal funds  rate," what they really mean is that they will increase the interest rates they charge on loans to banks and the interest  rates they pay on loans from banks. The Federal Reserve is essentially managing the interbank lending market by  increasing these two rates by 75 basis points each. This is how the fed "targets" the federal funds rate. The Fed is aiming  for a federal funds rate between 3.00% and 3.25%, which will occur and take effect in the banking system as of next  Wednesday at 2 PM. 

The market will begin to enter earnings season in the second week of October after it has had time to process the press  release and Summary of Economic Projections from the Fed. The market will have just received its most recent inflation  print for the previous four weeks by this period as well. The market and the Federal Reserve will both be delighted if this  

report comes in at consensus and supports the narrative that peak inflation was reached in July. This will likely cause  media coverage to focus on the fact that inflation is once again under control. Additional commentary from Fed  Presidents should then emerge and indicate that the fed funds rate will indeed peak in the first half of next year before  decreasing into the second half of 2023. This will signal a peak in short term interest rates with tame inflation in the  economy, likely leading to a respectable and potentially substantial rally in the market moving into the seasonally  positive months of November and December, fueled by a positive earnings season at the end of October and multiple  expansion into the end of the year. 

We will keep this letter concise as compared to our last several letters, mostly in part due to the rapidly evolving change  in monetary policy and the impactful economic readings shortly underway to be released. 

Main topics we’ll address in this letter: 

1. Peak Federal Funds Rate.  

(The Federal Reserve will raise the Federal Funds Rate by 75 basis points next week, On September 21^st). 2. Peak Inflation. 

3. Choppy September. 

4. Growing Earnings and a Stable multiple. 

Federal Funds Rate 

According to the Federal Reserve's "dot plot" and predictions, the federal funds rate will peak in the first half of next  year before falling into the second half of 2023. More crucially, the federal funds rate will not rise by nearly as much in  absolute terms as it has over the past six months. By the end of the next week, the Fed will have increased this rate from  0.12% (effectively 0%) in March to around 3%, or more than 3% in just six months. The Federal Reserve expects only  0.75% further rate increases in the nine months from September to June of next year in order to achieve a 3.80% peak  before decreasing it back to target 3.40% by the end of 2023. We are currently approaching the pinnacle of short-term  interest rates at roughly 3%, markets have welcomed this development in historic scenarios.  

The effective federal funds rate, or the interest rate at which banks actually borrow from and loan to one another, as  well as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's target rate range of 2.25% to 2.50% are shown below, along with  quartile ranges. The target shaded region is gray, and the effective rate is shown in blue.

The chart above shows that from 2005 to 2007, the Fed increased this rate in 0.25% increments before stopping for a  year and then sharply reducing it to 0%. Since then, it has remained at 0% until 2016, when they resumed rising it from  0% for the first time in eight years. It reached its peak and leveled out in 2020 at just over 2%, when the rate was  abruptly slashed back to 0% during the onset of the pandemic. They have been rising rates in 0.75% increments since  March of this year, quicker than they have in the previous 20 years. They intend to raise the rate to 3.80% in June of  2022, level it out in the middle of the summer, and then lower it back to 3.40% by the end of 2023. The Fed intends to  achieve sub 3% inflation by the end of 2024. I've attached a dot plot of the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee)  below that shows each Fed voting member's expectation for the target range's midpoint, which is currently 2.33%. The  expectations of the people who vote on the federal funds rate are represented by these dots. A 0.75% increase has a  higher than 90% likelihood of passing the polls scheduled for September 21. 

I've included a graph from the Fed's Monetary Policy report, which was most recently published on June 17th, that displays a  smoothed-out graph for the expected path of the federal funds rate and incorporates the shift in this forecast from  February earlier this year as a way to compare the shift in monetary policy stance that evolved over the summer. The  predicted route for the federal funds rate hiking cycle in February may be seen in the chart below, before the breakout  and full consequences of inflation in commodity prices brought on by the Russian war. Fast-forward to June, right before  the inflation peaks, is when we saw the federal funds projected rate hike path peak and the market bottom. 

The Fed made a comment on the graph above in its Monetary Policy report, which was published on June 17th, just one  month before peak inflation: 

“Similarly, according to the results of the Survey of Primary Dealers and the Survey of Market Participants, both  conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in April, the median of respondents’ projections for the most likely  path of the federal funds rate shifted up significantly since January. Before late February, the expected path of the  federal funds rate had started to increase notably in the third quarter of last year, in anticipation of increases in the  target range. Consistent with the rise in the expected path of the federal funds rate, yields on Treasury securities and  corporate bonds, as well as mortgage rates, all started to increase materially at a similar time. Meanwhile, broad equity  price indexes have declined on net. Overall, these moves in asset prices suggest tightening of financial conditions even  before the initial increase in the target range of the federal funds rate occurred in March (figure 32)” 

We will conclude our review of the Fed Funds Rate with a segway into the significance of the Fed Funds Rate and its  effect on general financial conditions. All other forms of lending in the economy, including lending to corporations,  financing to governments like the United States, and lending to individuals through mortgages, are centered on  interbank lending. The Federal Funds Rate's effect on these rates is clearly shown in Figure 32 below, which was just  provided by the Fed. We saw progressive increases in the yields on corporate bonds, government bonds, and the 30- year fixed mortgage rate from 2016 to 2020, aligning with the previous cycle of Fed rate hikes. When COVID started, the Fed cut rates to 0%, which prompted all of these rates to do the same, and they all dropped just as quickly as the  interbank lending rate (the federal funds rate). The interest rate on the 10-year treasury note, the interest rate on  corporate bonds, and the interest rate on mortgages have all increased since they increased the federal funds rate  beginning in March of this year, very rapidly as I had mentioned earlier. 

The 10-year, 2-year, and target federal funds rates are shown here as of June 17th, 2020 (the target range as of  September 12 is 2.25%-2.50%). The influence of the Fed Funds Rate is so great that it almost perfectly regulates the yield  on the 2-Year Treasury note. The 10-Year will eventually be impacted by the Fed Funds Rate as well, though less  immediately than the 2-Year. The 10-Year yield has historically been roughly 1% above the longer-term Federal funds  rate for more than 50 years. We anticipate the 10-Year to stabilize at roughly 3.5%, with longer-term Federal Funds Rate  estimates hovering around 2.5%. Mortgage rates will closely track the yields on investment-grade corporate bonds,  which we predict will peak in the 5.5% to 5.7% area. 

Peak Inflation. 

I've included two graphs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics below, one of which shows inflation month over month and  the other, year over year. Pay attention to the 12-month inflation rate, which has consistently above 0.60% for the  month. The most current data, which was released on August 10th and featured figures on inflation for the month of  July, showed a 0.0% reading, indicating no rise in prices from the previous month. At 8:30 a.m. on September 12th.  Prices for the month of August will be released at (ET). Prices are anticipated to have decreased by -0.10% in August.  Since the peak of the early epidemic in March 2020, economists have not anticipated a month-over-month deflation  until now.

Two inflation readings are displayed in the graph above: the CPI in blue and the "Core CPI" (which is the CPI minus food  and energy) in red. It's crucial to remember that the Core CPI peaked in March of this year, far earlier than the Total CPI  which peaked later in July. The only notable price rises in the economy since March have been in the food and energy  sectors. Due to the historically high volatility of the categories related to food and energy, the two inflation readings are  split. The Federal Reserve and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index generate predictions for CPI  inflation. Both organizations gather CPI forecasts from consumers rather than economists. Consumer estimates for inflation in July 2022 were about 4% a year ago, which is significantly lower than the record rate of 9.1% year over year  inflation reached in March. However, the Fed publishes its projections for PCE inflation, which is typically a more  accurate predictor of inflation. The Federal Reserve prefers to measure changes in the costs of goods and services in the  economy through "Personal Consumption Expenditures," which gives more weight to categories that are more  significant to consumers. The PCE inflation figures often lag the CPI by 1%.  

The popular CPI index, known to the general public, is charted below in blue together with the less popular PCE index,  preferred by the Fed, in red. These two measures have historically been closely correlated, with the CPI staying around  1% higher than the PCE at the higher end before quickly catching up to it again. While PCE peaked around 6.7%, CPI  peaked around 9.1%. 

The Fed's PCE inflation expectations, which were made public at their most recent meeting on June 17th, where they  increased the federal funds rate by 0.75%, are linked below. The Fed will publish its updated Monetary Policy Report the  following week, on September 21, and it will include an updated version of the graph below. Not much is expected to  change in this outlook because inflation has been mild and has been at or below estimates since their last meeting in  June. Focusing on year-end 2023, the median PCE inflation predictions are only 2.60 percent in 15 months. 

Federal Reserve Year End PCE Inflation expectations 2022/2023/2024/Longer Run:

Federal Reserve Median Year end PCE Inflation Expectations: 

With energy costs accounting for almost 30% of the 9.1% increase in prices over the previous year, the start of the war  in Russia in February certainly threw a wrench in supply chains that were already under stress from COVID. Due to this,  the Fed changed its stance on policy in February of this year in an effort to stop prices from rising by reducing the  demand for new loans and preventing an increase in the money supply, which would then increase the rate of inflation.  The 0.0% CPI reading from last month and the negative CPI reading due out tomorrow demonstrate the effectiveness of  the rate hikes. Combining all of these factors, the Fed will begin raising rates to the highest level in the first half of 2023  in an effort to avoid the mistake that Chairman Volcker made in the early 1980s when he used a start-and-stop strategy  that resulted in runaway inflation. This summer's peak inflation was reached in July, and since then prices have stabilized  and readings have declined. By year's end 2023, it is projected that the CPI will resume its long-term association with  PCE, with readings reverting to below 3% in line with PCE forecasts, aided along by the stabilizing volatility of food and  energy costs. Given that peak rates have been largely priced into the market and that the Fed intends to start a rate cutting cycle in the second half of 2023, the 10-year note should stay below 4%. This will likely result in a favorable  phase for equities markets. 

Choppy September  

September has historically been realized as the worst months for the stock market, at least over the 151 years of data  the S&P 500 has been around. One month has to be the worst, one month has to be the best, it’s just the luck of the  draw. Since 1871, you can see seasonality in play, with September being the worst month for the S&P followed by  Decembers best month, with the last two weeks being dubbed as the “Santa Claus rally”.  

Normally, I don't give seasonality much thought or weight, but this September, with the abundance of economic data  and monetary policy updates that will be issued over the next two weeks, I am anticipating a little bit more choppiness  in the market. The market will need some time to process all of this information, whether it is positive or negative,  

before settling down and reaching a consensus about the economy, at which point volatility will decrease. Considering  that the S&P is already up 4.00% for the month, perhaps this month will help even out this historical oddity.

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Wall street has been around since they gathered under the buttonwood tree 1792, and over the intervening decades,  the market has produced some truly amazing returns for long-term investors. The S&P 500, which includes the 500 most  successful American corporations, was established almost a century later, in 1871. The results of American innovation since the index's creation more than 150 years ago are genuinely startling, and I've linked them below. 

$1.00 invested in the S&P 500 in 1871 would have generated 33,000 times its original purchasing power today. That is  the result of owning growing, high-quality, innovative American business. The golden egg that was laid 200 years ago  keeps on laying, and we could not be more excited for the years and decades to come.

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What P to pay for the E? 

Growing Earnings and a Stable Multiple.  

The rising stock prices that the market has given throughout time that are reflected here are not the result of valuations.  Earnings, or the amount of profit a corporation makes, would be in charge of that. The valuation of a corporation tends  to hold steady over time, thus if the company's earnings increases 20 times over time, its stock will do the same. Over  time, if its profit decreases by 50%, so will its stock. Earnings increase over time, nearly every year,  while valuations remain unchanged. The investor must respond to the question of what price to pay for those earnings,  not how much is being generated (as that is reported). 

Four things lead to earnings growth over time, and that’s inflation, population growth, technological innovation, and  “natural selection”.  

Inflation leads to earnings growth because companies are generating the same profit margin on increased sales. Value  and low volatility equities, which often trade in raw materials and basic commodities and services, have performed well  over the past year in part due to this - with energy and commodity-based companies performing the best. The 10-year  rate increase, however, brought on by inflation, can have detrimental short-term impacts to the market, resulting in a  temporary drop in valuation, which we have seen over the last year.  

Population Growth leads to earnings growth over time, because more people are consuming from the same company.  This means for companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, Target, McDonalds, and Coca-Cola, popular staples in our portfolios – more revenue, and more earnings. 

Technological innovation leads to earnings growth because it enables new industries that interact with existing  industries, and increases the overall output of firms in the form of increased unit output and increased productivity. Increasing compute power of microprocessors, such as GPU’s and CPU’s, have led to more work being completed in less  time, increasing the rate of medical breakthroughs and leading to the creation of the world wide web. 20% more  productivity translates to 20% more money available for purchases after a workday, and 20% more revenue for  companies. Right now it takes a week’s worth of savings to buy a cheap pair of shoes and a year’s worth of savings to  buy a cheap car for the average American, but with increasing productivity and innovation, hopefully in 20 years that  same saving duration will allow them to buy the latest iPad model and a luxury car instead.  

Finally, Natural Selection leads to earnings growth, because there are less companies to compete with. Increasing  Revenues (GDP, etc) with less companies being recipients of those revenues. The “Willshire 5000” index, a not so  popular index that includes nearly every publicly traded company in the U.S. – used to be the “Willshire 6,000” index.  With only 3,600 companies currently in its index, Willshire might have to rename the index again. This was covered in a  piece by Bloomberg, which attributed a lot of the cause to mergers and acquisitions, and raw competition. “About 3,600  firms were listed on U.S. stock exchanges at the end of 2017, down more than half from 1997”. – Bloomberg.

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Where is the E going? 

I've included a table and a graph (page 12) with Ed's and consensus predictions for earnings per share for one share of  the S&P 500 for the remainder of this year and 2023 below. Dr. Yardeni earned his PhD from Yale in 1976, and was an  economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is one of my favorite economists that I follow. The table  below shows his earnings projections for the S&P 500 going back to 2009. Dr. Yardeni's predictions are in the left-hand  column, and the consensus forecast predictions of economists are in the right-hand column. Ed's estimates align with  the consensus before the third quarter of 2021 since real profits per share replace both Dr. Yardeni's and the consensus'  earnings expectations before Q3 of 2021. Starting in 2018, earnings per share for the S&P 500 are divided into quarters.  

For next year, the 12 months through 2023, Dr. Yardeni is expecting $235 of earnings per share for the S&P 500, while  consensus economists’ forecasts are expecting $243.59 per share. We get at $239.29 by averaging these two. In other  words, one S&P 500 share will generate $239.29 in earnings by the end of 2023. This leaves the question – how much do  we pay for those earnings?

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What Price (P) do we pay for the (E)? 

What do we pay for the S&P 500's $239.59 earnings per share? Well, the solution to that is really simple, and we'll get to  it. I've included the S&P 500's real earnings per share going back to 2007 in the graph below. Earnings climbed from  $60.80 in 2007 to $220.80 in the most recent real earnings report, representing a 263%, or 3.63x, rise in earnings for the  index since 2007 - not bad. Earnings did decline during the financial crisis and during covid. This growth in  earnings explains why the S&P 500 has increased in value by about three times since 2007. 

Dr. Yardeni's year-end projection for his expected earnings for 2022 and 2023 is represented by the flat blue and  green lines. He forecasts that this year's earnings will come in at $215.00 per share (the flat blue line), which is slightly  less than the actual number of $220.80 per share (the red line). Contrarily, consensus forecasts earnings for this year to  come in at $225.34, up around $5 from the most recent earnings $220.80 of earnings on September 8th. Since real  earnings are rising from $220.80 while we approach a likely positive earnings season in the latter part of October, it  appears that Ed will need to modestly raise his year-end projections. (During earnings season, the majority of the 500  companies in the S&P 500 disclose their profit or earnings for the previous fiscal quarter.) The flat green line is Dr.  Yardeni's forecast for earnings per share for the following year, 2023, which we saw in the table on the previous page.  He projects that the S&P will produce $235 in earnings in 2023.  

The dashed lines show the consensus earnings trajectory from Q2 of 2020 through Q4 of 2023 in blue and the entire  year of 2023 in green, which are the consensus economic predictions for earnings per share. Dr. Yardeni overlaps the  consensus trajectory for the upcoming year on top of the one for the previous year. I'm not sure why he does this  specifically, but I believe it's to graphically represent the rise in earnings anticipated by consensus for the coming year.  According to the table on the previous page, the S&P is expected to produce $243.59 in earnings per share in the next  year, 2023.

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Finally, returning to the original question, what do we pay for this year's projected earnings (E)? Let's use the consensus  estimate of $243.59 in earnings for 2023 to keep things straightforward.  

The graph below displays what (P) we pay considering the coming years (E). This is what’s known as the price to earnings  ratio, or PE ratio! It reveals the price that investors are willing to pay for the S&P 500 index's projected earnings for the  upcoming year. In other words, it informs us of the appropriate "multiple" to pay for earnings. Do we pay 10x or  20x earnings? The answer to that question lies in the 10-year yield. 

The 10-Year Government Note currently yields 3.32%. Historically, the S&P has traded at almost an exact inverse to this  yield. The PE Ratio for the S&P 500 is usually equal to the inverse of the 10-Year yield. The inverse of 100/3.32 = 30.12x,  so technically speaking, that would not be an inappropriate PE ratio (shown overtime below in red) for the S&P 500.  However, the market is warry of paying that high of a price for earnings given the 50-year history of the 10-year yield  being around 5% - making this number very sticky toward 20x next year’s earnings. 

We can therefore simply determine the price given (1) the earnings and (2) a reasonable multiple to pay on those next  year's earnings by conducting a little bit of math. On December 31st, 2022, Dr. Yardeni anticipates that the market will  be trading between 15x and 18x 2023 earnings. He anticipates the market to be priced between 16 and 19 times 2024  earnings on December 31st, 2023. 

The forward PE ratio for the S&P peaked at 23x in the winter of 2021, when the 10-year yield dropped to only 0.50% as  the target federal funds rate remained between 0.00% - 0.25%. I personally expect this forward PE Ratio to be at 18x by  year end 2022, and at 20x by year end 2023, more in line with consensus and slightly above Ed’s personal forecast.  

By year end 2022, Brim is expecting the S&P to be trading at 18x 2023 earnings of $243.59 per share, at $4,384, matching the higher end of Dr. Yardeni’s 15.5-18x forecast for the end of this year. This represents a 6.66% upside in the  S&P 500 index from Monday’s closing price.  

Monday’s closing price:

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The final graph Dr. Yardeni included in his PDF is shown below. It shows the price history of the S&P 500 index over time,  together with Dr. Yardeni's year-end forecast, which was made at the start of the year using the PE ratio (above)  multiplied by the expected earnings per share for the next year. The upper and lower ranges for Dr. Yardeni's projected  S&P 500 index price level at year end are shown by two red lines for this year and the next year. We are currently  between Ed's top and bottom-line price forecasts (which he initiated at the beginning of this year) for December 31,  2022. His projected $4,230 price per share for the S&P 500 on December 31st, 2023, is based on his higher end estimate  of 18x earnings on $215 in 2023 earnings per share (18 * $235 = 4,230). 

With his low end forecast for the index for the year ending December 31^st 2023 at 4,080 per share, Dr. Yardeni  anticipates the index to be no less than 1% higher than its closing price of 4,110 on September 12th. Ed's higher end  price projection is 4,845 on 19x ahead forward 2023 earrings for the S&P's index level as of December 31st, 2023. (i.e. – 2024 earnings – he thinks the market will trade at 19x the expected 2024 earnings per share). So, 4,845/19 = $255. This  is an indirect way of Ed telling us what he thinks the S&P will earn per share in 2024 – much higher from today’s level of  $220.80. 

The forward PE Ratio for the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 earnings per share line historical graphs above demonstrate why  it is so challenging to time the market in the near run. Earnings gradually rise over time but are impacted by volatility  through changing functions in valuation on an hour by hour and daily basis. When the market opens in the morning and  a stock drops by 5%, that doesn’t mean the company is earning 5% less in profits, it more than likely means the  

companies valuation dropped by 5%. That 5% decline will often be followed by a greater than 5% rally as the weeks pass  by while company approaches its positive quarterly earnings announcement. We see a choppy September for the  market. We all know time flies and October will be here before we know it, moving into the end of November. We’d love  it if the 8.78% compound annual return the market has delivered over time came on a daily drip basis. But unfortunately  that hasn’t been the case. The market looks very similar to a mountain, the difference being there is no limit on  elevation. Pointing out the troughs is the best way to enter and climb the ever-growing mountain, and not vice versa.  The troughs are constrained while the peak, in the financial mountain called the stock market, is unlimited. History  shows while there are 30 to 40% declines, it’s in the big wake of a 33,000x return since the start. A wealth building  strategy is not to look for the 30 to 40% – but look for the 33,000%. 

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DISCLOSURE: 

Bull Run Investment Management is a registered investment advisor. Information presented herein is for educational purposes only and does not intend  to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and  unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed.  

Readers of the information contained on this performance sheet, should be aware that any action taken by the viewer/reader based on this information  is taken at their own risk. This information does not address individual situations and should not be construed or viewed as any type of individual or  group recommendation. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser, tax professional, and/or legal counsel before implementing any  securities, investments, or investment strategies discussed.  

Portfolio performance is shown net of the advisory fees of 1.65%, the highest fee charged by Bull Run Investment Management and sample trading  costs based on our Custodian’s Charles Schwab’s trading costs. Performance does not reflect the deduction of other fees or expenses, including but not  limited to brokerage fees, custodial fees and fees and expenses charged by mutual funds and other investment companies. Performance results shown  include the reinvestment of dividends and interest on cash balances where applicable. The data used to calculate the portfolio performance was  obtained from sources deemed reliable and then organized and presented by Bull Run Investment Management.  

The performance calculations have not been audited by any third party. Actual performance of client portfolios may differ materially due to the timing  related to additional client deposits or withdrawals and the actual deployment and investment of a client portfolio, the length of time various positions  are held, the client’s objectives and restrictions, and fees and expenses incurred by any specific individual portfolio.  

Return Comparison: The S&P 500 was chosen for comparison as it is generally well recognized as an indicator or representation of the stock market in  general and includes a cross section of equity holdings.  

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS  

OUTSIDE CITATIONS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE (Pg’s 10-12 Referenced in Supplemental Blog Post PDF): Pg. 1 Monthly Inflation – Page 1 

Pg. 2 Federal Funds Rate 

Pg. 3 Federal Reserve Dot Plot – Page 4 

Pg. 4 Market Implied Fed Funds Rate Path – Page 28 

Pg. 5 10-Year Note / 2 Year Note / Federal Funds Rate – Page 28 

Pg. 6 Monthly Inflation – Page 1 Annual Inflation – Page 2  

Pg 7 CPI and PCE Inflation Indexes 

Pg 8 Choppy September 

Pg 9 Wallstreet Buttonwood Tree 

Pg 10 The 4 Drivers of Earnings Growth U.S Productivity Boom Bloomberg Natural Selection Pg 11 Dr. Edward Yardeni Biography S&P 500 Earnings Per Share Table – Page 2 

Pg 12 S&P 500 Earnings Per Share History – Page 4 

Pg 13 S&P 500 Forward PE History – Page 5 

Pg 14 S&P 500 Index Price History – Page 5