Good evening. I spent too much time today reading the holiday gift guides that start dropping this time of year (if you have a favorite, send it my way). They’re fun, but they also make me a little anxious about what I’m going to be spending on gifts this year. Have you seen what Lego costs these days?

I have inflation on the brain because we got a new consumer price index reading today, and it’s hotter than many economists expected. Crucially, inflation is elevated even when you strip out food and energy, the latter of which has been down lately. We’ll talk about that, the market reaction and impact on rate hikes below. But first, Mitchell Hartman runs through the numbers you need to know.  — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

October’s consumer price index report, out Tuesday, is chock-full of strong inflation numbers. And sometimes “strong” or “robust” isn’t good when it comes to economic data.

Headline inflation was up 0.4% month-over-month, down from September’s rate of increase, but still higher than economists expected. Core inflation rose 0.3%, same as September and also higher than expected.

There are no year-over-year inflation rates this month, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics didn’t publish them last year during the government shutdown. But economists are resourceful, and extrapolating from the numbers we do have, the best estimate is that headline inflation was approximately 4% year-over-year in October.

There’s almost nothing going in the right direction with inflation, said Andrew Davis, head of investment strategy at Bryn Mawr Trust.

“You had headline above expectation, core above expectation. Even core services excluding energy — that’s running a little hot,” he said.

Thomas Ryan, senior North America economist at Capital Economics, called it “a shocker of a CPI release.”

“Gasoline prices rose 1% on the month. We knew that would lift headline inflation. Why I describe it as a shocker is inflation pressures were a lot broader than energy,” he said.

The economy has been absorbing the surge in oil prices from the Iran war since early spring. But now?

“We’re getting more of the ‘bleed-through’ of the higher input costs into other costs in the economy,” said Boston College economist Brian Bethune.

That stems from the soaring cost of diesel, Ryan at Capital Economics said, which is critical to the agriculture and transportation sectors. “That starts to feed through to higher prices on the shelves,” he said.

So in October, food inflation picked up. So did services.

Voters all around the country voted last week whether to ban or limit data center development. And largely, data centers lost.

Residents like Colpo have been fighting to slow down a $14.5 billion hyperscale data center project in Bessemer, to no avail. Elected officials and the developer, QTS, wouldn’t talk to us, but Colpo and her neighbors did.

They told us they’re wrestling with an impossible choice: Is it better to stay put, when the forest behind your house is getting cut down? Or take the offer and leave?

Japan’s cheap, tiny kei vehicles, particularly small pickups like the Honda Acty, have an online cult following here in the States, but they haven’t been easy to get.

Toyota announced today it’s bringing back the defunct Scion brand (remember these 2000s cube cars?) with a new made-in-America mini truck, the Kei-01, in 2027. They’ll be slow, and limited to fleet sales to start, but Toyota said this is just the first step. Welcome news, considering the average cost of a new car just hit $51,109.