Iran deal sends oil down 11%, markets up

Consumer pressure index CPIX hit 67.6 with velocity spiking to a z-score of 3.36, yet official inflation sits at 3.0% and asking prices are flat year-on-year at £268.1k. This divergence suggests the stress is happening in categories that don't weight heavily in headline CPI but matter enormously for disposable income. Travel & Leisure leads activity with 21 fires despite low risk ratings, pointing to distressed spending rather than confident consumption.

The mechanism is clear: households are burning through discretionary budgets faster than income can replenish them. When Travel & Leisure, Restaurants, and Grocery all register identical fire counts at 21, you're seeing synchronized pressure across elastic and inelastic spending. The 10.1-point CPIX rise over four periods shows this isn't noise. It's sustained financial compression hitting where official statistics don't measure effectively.

Gilt yields at 4.88% suggest the Bank of England has more room to cut than the stress signals indicate it should use. If consumer velocity continues at 3.36 standard deviations above normal while official metrics stay benign, policy will lag reality by quarters. The mismatch between lived inflation and measured inflation is widening.

Repricing discretionary spend budgets now beats waiting for the ONS to catch up with what consumers already know.