October's inflation breakdown is basically a ghost town—most components come up empty.

Here's the thing: without actual month-to-month data, you can't even run the numbers.

And guess what the key move was? The BLS took a pretty big shortcut on shelter costs. They penciled in 0% inflation for October on the housing side.

That's a hefty assumption in an inflation report. Makes you wonder what the real picture would look like if they had to fill in all those blanks. When housing carries that much weight in the CPI calculation, one zero assumption ripples through the whole analysis.