High inflation? A generation of investors has never felt it

The central question gripping Wall Street is whether the burst of inflation hitting the economy as it recovers from the pandemic is just temporary or the start of a real problem. The answer threatens to crack the stock market’s incredible, record-setting run that began in March 2020.

Adding to the fog of the debate — and the uncertainty that has markets churning — is that more than a generation has passed on Wall Street since investors had any experience at all with high, long-lasting inflation.

What's clear is that the average cost of regular gasoline has jumped to $3.04 per gallon from $1.89 a year earlier. Used cars and trucks cost 21% more last month than a year before. Airline fares rose nearly 10%.

Many economists, as well as the Federal Reserve, say not to worry about any of this. They're convinced these fast priced gains will prove fleeting. If the experts are wrong, however, as they often are, it could ravage the economy and force the Fed to reverse its record-low interest rate policy and trim the bond purchases that are boosting markets.

That possibility has led to some jagged moves in the stock market. The S&P 500 slumped 2.1% in one day last month after a report showed the Consumer Price Index rose at the fastest pace since 2008.

The difficulty is that the last time very high, long-lasting inflation was a serious threat for the economy was before many of today's professional money managers were born. To have had experience in such a market, they need to remember the 1970s and early 1980s, when inflation remained stubbornly above 10%.

"Certainly, having gone through that, it’s helpful," said Rich Weiss, a 61-year-old senior portfolio manager at American Century Investments. He started in the industry in 1984, when inflation was finally on the decline, but he remembers how painful the earlier years had been while he was in graduate school.

"Anybody, if they want, can go back to the numbers and see what happens when inflation becomes ingrained, embedded in the fabric of the economy and the markets," he said. "But it’s different if you live through it."

The numbers show that the high-inflation era was painfully bumpy for stocks, giving some credence to the worries that are shaking Wall Street now. The S&P 500 tumbled 29.7% in 1974 as inflation shot up to 12.1%. But big gains were interspersed through the period as well, such as a 31.5% surge in 1975.

Brian Jacobsen, a senior investment strategist at Wells Fargo Asset Management, was born a year after that, in 1976.

Most of Jacobsen's working life has been in an era of ever-moderating inflation and interest rates. He doesn’t know what it was like to live through the trauma of price controls or having to pay a mortgage with a 10% interest rate. But he spent much of his time studying it while earning his doctorate in economics.

"Fortunately, experience can be transmitted through generations of investors," he said.

Like American Century's Weiss, Jacobsen believes this rise in inflation will be only "transitory," which is the word Fed officials have used to describe it.

He also talks regularly with colleagues, both retired and still-working, who lived through the last inflation era. Their message to him so far?

"They told me this is nothing," Jacobsen said. "Mainly because they lived through it before, and they’re like, ’4.2% inflation? Put a 1 in front of that number and then maybe I’ll worry. Don’t wake me until it’s 14.2%.'"