Breaking Down Inflation Trends: Insights from Rodney Williams of SoLo Funds

Oil prices may have cooled last week, but economists are still bracing for the aftershocks.

And in March, headline inflation posted its biggest monthly jump in years, gas prices skyrocketing more than 20% in March alone, driving nearly three quarters of the total inflation surge.

While the broader energy index shot up nearly 11%, its largest one month leap since 2005.

But there are pockets of relief for consumers.

Grocery prices actually dipped.

The cost of used cars and trucks fell, extending a long-term downward trend.

Now all eyes are on the Fed's preferred inflation metric due at the end of the month, but those numbers will drop after the central bank makes its next call on interest rates.

But as we all know, most traditional economic data are backward looking.

And joining me live here at the New York Stock Exchange is Rodney Williams, co-founder and President of SoLo Funds.

Rodney, great to have you.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

Well we all know businesses as well as American consumers alike are paying attention. inflation data.

So tell me about the live indicators that you're paying attention to and what does all of this mean for inflation moving forward?

Solo now is our prediction engine attempting to predict the CPI in advance for consumers.

It allows them to get a better handle on what inflation may be, but also for enterprises.

We believe that there's a lot of advantages that could be established.

Established with financial services as well as researchers and brands in the event they understand inflation sooner or more in real time and that's the purpose of the product.

Yes, and inflation affects not just consumers but also businesses and of course that is something that regulators, central banks are also keeping an eye on here and artificial intelligence is also an investment theme as well as a tool that many people are paying attention to.

So tell us your take on artificial intelligence and what you're doing.

Our journey with artificial intelligence started with how we assess risk for our demographic.

Historically our demographic was considered too risky, and we built a proprietary model back in 2018 to assess risk.

Who has done really well for solo funds as a lending and borrowing.

Marketplace as we approach 2026 and the advances in AI, it gave us the ability to start looking forward.

So we took a lot of the things that we developed to assess the risk of consumer to then predict the consumer as it relates to a forward looking prediction engine.

But we're built on the back of the advances of AI, and I think what consumers need to understand at companies at large, is when you have the data, the data is what makes the AI product unique.

We have a very, very unique data set and the fact that since 2018, millions of borrowers have been using our product for short-term lending and borrowing, so not just on the borrowing side where they're spending, but also on the lending side when they're looking at this product as a potential investment vehicle.

Yeah, so tell me a little bit more about this data because you brought up a lot of things that all of us are paying attention to prediction markets as well as artificial intelligence, and they are both opportunities and risks, aren't there?

Definitely risks.

What I think for us, our approach has always been AI forward, but when I look at prediction markets and sometimes enterprises and consumers are using prediction markets as a way to understand what's happening in the real world, and we have to understand that that's based on consumer sentiment, but Also consumers hedging, right.

Our approach is built on real data on real consumers in real time, their actual spending that is happening today.

So we think we know it's actually more accurate.

We have successfully predicted the CPI for the last two months.

And I do want to get a take on your mission as an organization, and your mission is to fund the underbank.

So tell us about the importance of being a B Corp.

Our approach to being a B Corp is in our DNA.

I think that financial companies more should be a benefit corporation.

For us it's a third party that reviews everything that we do to ensure that our business model, our practices, and that we manage and balance people align with profits.

So for us it's something we're extremely proud of.

And as you mentioned, borrowing costs are a big concern in the current environment.

So how exactly do you vet borrowers without taking on massive credit risks?

Yeah, well, for us we have a very, very different model.

It's actually new, and I think for us, I learned this with my mom and her use of payday loans and credit cards when I was younger, but the The way interest accrues over time makes it extremely difficult to understand what a loan or a credit card is going to be 3 years from now in the event I'm late.

Our products are simple fee structures, flat fee structures that do not grow over time and ultimately do not cause that debt trap, and we've been studied academically to be proven to be about 1/3 the cost of a credit card.

And about 2, also significantly less than payday loans as well.

Well, Rodney, we will have to leave it there for today, but thank you so much for joining us and thank you so much for sharing the story.

Thank you.

Thank you.