World Food Prices Hit Four-Year Highs: Is Food Inflation Already Baked into the Next CPI Report?

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is InvestTalk from KPP Financial, helping investors make sense of the markets one day at a time. Here's your host, Justin Klein.

Justin Klein (0:16)

Good afternoon, fellow investors, and welcome back to InvestTalk. This is our Monday, Friday, September 11th, 2026 edition of InvestTalk, which means it's my birthday show. So don't rush, don't everybody rush to the phones that wants to call and wish me happy birthday. You don't need to do that. But I would love to hear from you, whatever's on your mind. That's what this show is about. We want to hear what you are thinking about, what questions you have about money, investing, the world at large, whatever that might be. I would love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your questions, so that I can give you my perspective, data developed over 25 years of investment experience.

I love doing the show. So whether it's my birthday or not, it's a treat for me.

So we're here for this hour, this next hour with you. Give me a call at 888-99-CHART. And now in just a bit, I'm going to talk about today's market performance and run down the show topics for this hour. First, let's tackle this caller question now.

SPEAKER_3 (1:26)

Hi Justin and Luke. I'm calling today about Cisco CSCO.

I'm up a little bit on this company and I was just wondering if you think now is a good time to take some profits or maybe exit entirely. I'm trying to consolidate my portfolio right now. Thank you very much for your time. Have a good day.

Justin Klein (1:44)

All right. Looking at Cisco, he's up on it and he's thinking about maybe taking profits. Well, we own this stock for clients and some of our strategies, so we like it. We're also up nicely. It did have a pretty big run. We bought it earlier this year. It was in the 70s and it ran up to a high recently around 130 Now it's at about 112 So it has pulled back, but if you go look at a chart, it's just bullish consolidation.

There's nothing wrong with the chart. There's nothing wrong with the trajectory of the business. Either earnings are supposed to be up 18% this year, then another 9% next year.

And based on forward-looking earnings, it's trading at about a 20 multiple.

That's not very expensive by any means.

And they're right in the heart of the AI data center build app. They sell networking equipment, security, cloud management, hardware, et cetera.

Huge company, $423 billion market cap. So I don't understand why you'd want to trim it. You're up. Yes, that's good. That's what you want to be. You want to be watering your flowers, continue to let them bloom and trimming the fat, trimming the things that are not doing well.

This is secular tailwinds to it. And to me, yes, there are going to be the hyperscalers that over invest and they have to pull back. And I think in time, the AI data center build out will, trend will pull back. But that doesn't mean the secular tailwinds aren't there. And in fact, they are selling the picks and shovels. And I've said this many times that within the AI build out, AI data center build out ecosystem, you want to own the companies that are selling the picks and shovels of the entire ecosystem. Because you see these hyperscalers and they are looking at this as life and death. If they're willing to pay up, they're willing to pay high margins or high prices so that these companies like a Cisco can get high margins is what I mean. So no, I would continue to hold it. We continue to hold it. There's no reason to jump ship right now, especially technically everything looks to be constructive. Now I have a great show today for you. And we're going to look into what's going on with food prices. Food prices are at the highest level since 2022 Supply risk is mounting. And so we're going to dig in to that data. We also are answering lists of questions on ACWI, the iShares, MSCI, ACWI index. I think it's a foreign equity index. Actually, sorry, that's what we talked about yesterday. Yesterday, we talked about that. We also talked about diesel prices, the record, inflationary wildcard is really a big factor here. So if you happen to miss it, go check out Tuesday's show. We missed the last couple of days. That's why I got a bit confused there. Luke has been out sick and I was traveling, and so I'm back. Luke is still sick. Hopefully, he's mended by next week. But that was our last live show. So if you want to go check that out, check out Tuesday's show, wherever you get your podcast. There was a lot of ground to cover today, over the next 45 minutes or so, and today we're gonna focus on, like I said, whole food prices, world food prices, hitting a four-year high. Food inflation is already baked into the next CPI report, or is it? So we're gonna dig in to the UN's new Food and Agricultural Organization report on different types of food as well. What is really getting a big price increase? We also have other topics on the docket as well. I want to highlight one of YieldMax. YieldMax is an ETF, fun family, ETF fun family, that has taken off in AUM over the past few years, mainly driven by selling or coming out with covered call ETFs. And one of the ones that has attracted the most amount of money is one called the Ultra Option Income Strategy, ULTY. And it's where people are chasing yield aggressively. The question is, is it a good buy? We'll look at some total return numbers that can give you a sense of why these are much higher risk than most people realize. Right now, ULTY has a quoted yield of 41%.