What are CPI and PPI, and why do options traders watch the release dates?

CPI and PPI are two monthly inflation reports from the U.S. government. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) tracks the prices people pay for everyday goods and services. The Producer Price Index (PPI) tracks the prices businesses receive for what they produce. Both come out at 08:30 ET on dates published in advance, an hour before the stock market opens, and options traders mark those dates because option prices that cover them can carry the uncertainty of the release.

This is the first post in our series on scheduled market events. It covers what the two reports measure, when the next ones come out, how to read the August 2026 numbers, and why the dates matter to anyone looking at options on an index fund like SPY.

What CPI and PPI measure, and who publishes them

Both reports come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The BLS defines the Consumer Price Index as a measure of the average change over time in prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services.¹ Think of it as a large, fixed shopping list priced every month. When the cost of that list rises, the index rises.

The Producer Price Index measures the average change over time in the selling prices received by domestic producers for their output.² It looks at the same economy from the seller's side: what factories, farms and service firms charge.

Each report comes with two kinds of numbers that get quoted in headlines:

• Headline is the change in the full index, everything included.
• Core removes items that tend to swing a lot. For CPI, core is "all items less food and energy."¹ For PPI, the comparable series is final demand less foods, energy and trade services.²

Each also comes in two time frames: the change from last month, and the change from the same month a year earlier (the 12-month change).

When the next releases come out

The BLS publishes its release calendar ahead of time. The next three dates on the calendar, as of 2026-10-12:

That puts both inflation reports and the monthly options expiration in the same three trading days this month.

Reading the August 2026 numbers

The most recent published reports, as of 2026-10-12, cover August 2026. CPI came out on 2026-09-11 and PPI on 2026-09-10.⁶⁷

The BLS also publishes the index levels behind those percentages.⁸ The unadjusted CPI levels were:

Step 1: The headline 12-month change

A percentage change is the new level divided by the old level, minus one. For the headline index:

That matches the 3.4% the BLS reported.

Step 2: The core 12-month change

The same arithmetic on the core index:

The BLS reports this as 2.4%. Both are the same result at different precision: the unrounded value sits just under 2.45%, so at the one decimal the BLS uses it rounds down to 2.4%.

The gap between the two tells you something. Headline was 3.4% and core was 2.4%, so the items core leaves out, food and energy, pushed the full index up faster than the rest of the basket over those 12 months.

Step 3: Why the monthly number does not reproduce

Try the same method on the monthly change, July to August, using unadjusted levels:

The headline monthly figure the BLS reported was 0.4%. The difference is seasonal adjustment. Monthly changes in the headline are seasonally adjusted, which strips out patterns that repeat every year at the same time, while the 12-month change is computed from unadjusted indexes.¹ Comparing a month with the same month a year earlier already cancels the seasonal pattern, so no adjustment is needed there. A monthly comparison needs it.

This is a common trip-up when reading the report: the monthly headline and the index table use different series, and both are correct.

Step 4: PPI alongside CPI

PPI final demand rose 0.4% on the month and 5.4% over 12 months.⁷ Read next to CPI, it shows prices on the producer side moving at a different pace from prices on the consumer side over the same period. PPI is released a day after CPI this month, so the two arrive back to back.

Why options traders mark these dates

Three facts about these releases matter for anyone reading options.

The time is fixed and comes before the open. The reports go out at 08:30 ET, and the U.S. stock market opens at 09:30 ET. Whatever the release says, the regular session for stocks and index funds like SPY opens an hour after it is public.

The date is known weeks ahead. Nobody knows the number before it is published. Everyone knows when it will be published. An option whose life spans that date covers the release, and its price can carry the uncertainty of that known event. The usual measure of that priced-in uncertainty is implied volatility.

This month, the dates stack up. CPI on Wednesday, PPI on Thursday and the monthly expiration on Friday fall within the same three sessions. An option expiring on 2026-10-16 spans both reports.

None of this says which way a release will go or how prices will react. It says when the information arrives, and that is something you can put on a calendar. Our guide on how to read options flow covers how to look at the trades that print around dates like these without reading more into them than the tape shows.

How to practice this

The calendar is the easy part to practice. Before the next release, note the date and time, then look at options on SPY that expire before and after it and compare their implied volatility.

CaymanBot gives you a $100K paper trading account, so you can open positions around a release date with no real money at stake and see what happened to them once the number came out.

In the first two Learning Mode stages, each trade on the feed comes with a plain-English sentence you can check against the strike, expiry and premium.

A free account shows options data delayed 16 minutes (60 minutes without an account). Founding Premium costs $119 a year or $14.99 a month for the first 100 paying members, locked while your subscription renews; the regular price is $24.99 a month or $224.99 a year. Premium adds real-time options flow for users who complete the OPRA non-professional attestation. New accounts start with a 14-day Premium trial.

Educational only, not investment advice.