Three Stock Market Rebuttals to the Inflation Cassandra Case
- Companies with low pricing power, high labor costs outperform
- Operating margins for S&P 500 companies at an all-time high
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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Fears about margin-shredding inflation are palpable among corporate executives and Wall Street analysts, but equity investors are relatively sanguine.
Shares of companies with higher pricing power -- the capacity to pass on costs to customers without harming the business -- are crumbling relatives to their less-advantaged peers. Meanwhile, S&P 500 stocks with the highest labor costs are trouncing firms with relatively low ones. And corporate operating margins are at all-time highs.