Shares of leading software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies Snowflake (NYSE: SNOW), DocuSign (NASDAQ: DOCU), and Atlassian (NASDAQ: TEAM) all fell Friday, trading down by 3.7%, 4.1%, and 3.7%, respectively, as of 1:39 p.m. ET.

When SaaS stocks fall in tandem, there is a good chance the culprits are inflation and investors' fears of higher interest rates. And, yes, inflation is looking less easy to tame. More data from January was released Friday morning in the form of the Bureau of Economic Analysis' Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index report, which showed a slight reacceleration after three months of declining growth.

The PCE price index is an important metric of U.S. inflation, and for January, its core number (which excludes volatile food and energy prices) rose 0.6% month over month, higher than the 0.4% jump anticipated. Year over year, it rose 4.7%, higher than the 4.5% expected.

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Source Fool.com