Economic news is often a "good but bad" reality. For example, inflation finally slowed some, with consumer prices flat between June and July. But that was basically due to a welcome drop in energy prices. But food prices kept growing, as did car expenses and rents.

For industries, the producer price index, or PPI, is frequently a more telling economic impact on them than the consumer price index, or CPI, which is what gets attention as the official inflation number.

The PPI is the business equivalent of the CPI: the prices companies see. Or as the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts it, "The Producer Price Index (PPI) program measures the average change over time in the selling prices received by domestic producers for their output. The prices included in the PPI are from the first commercial transaction for many products and some services."