No doubt these all are difficult to interpret. It's still a great thing to have numbers (even when the methodology for some numbers is very questionable). But

No doubt these all are difficult to interpret. It's still a great thing to have numbers (even when the methodology for some numbers is very questionable). But if you are trying to drive or merely gauge your investment performance, or your voting strategy, this is hard to read. For example, it's fair that people were able to spend much less during Covid. Bad for vendors, great for people's overall savings which had been often too low for a while. And so, fair that there was a rebound in spending. Which is a problem when it leads to high interest rates and a major step in inflation (which some people deny exists altogether). Meanwhile there was giant increases in money supply. Most of which is not going to be re-absorbed anytime soon if ever. And is bound to have a commensurable effect. Etc, etc, etc. And so in the end how do I interpret my current investment performance? (And equally interesting question is how should our country spend / invest / repay / drive this or that). Just pick a question, any question. Is most of my investment performance purely driven by increased money supply? (meaning that even if I over-performed indexes, I may have grossly underperformed inflation - i.e. be much poorer). Hard to tell actually. Of course one way is simply to spend conservatively (i.e. too little) and invest "more than needed". But obviously that's grossly sub-optimal. For example if your objective is to spend more than comfortably so as to die pennyless <- it's an exageration but not a bad strategy depending on family or donation objectives. Anyway. Tough job.