Stock market today: Wall Street slips ahead of inflation report
Stocks are slipping as Wall Street waits for a highly anticipated report on inflation that’s arriving the following day
NEW YORK — Stocks are slipping Wednesday, weighed by drops for Big Tech companies, as Wall Street waits for a highly anticipated report on inflation that's arriving the next day.
The S&P 500 was down 0.6% in midday trading, coming off a rough run where it’s dropped in five of the last six days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 113 points, or 0.3%, at 35,200, as of 11:20 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower.
Stocks have cooled in August since soaring 19.5% through the first seven months of the year. Several reasons are behind the mini-pullback, including criticism that Wall Street too quickly formed a consensus that inflation will keep cooling, the economy will keep growing and the Federal Reserve has already finished its hikes to interest rates.
A report on Thursday will offer a big clue on how warranted those hopes are. The U.S. government will give the latest monthly update on inflation that consumers are feeling across the country, and economists expect to see an acceleration to 3.3% in July from 3% in June.
Such a reading would be down sharply from its peak of more than 9% last summer, but economists say the last bit of improvement to get inflation down to the Fed’s 2% target may be the toughest part.
Fed officials have said repeatedly recently that their upcoming decisions on interest rates will depend on what the data tells them, and they've pointed to reports on inflation and the job market in particular.
“With risks turning increasingly two-sided, Fed officials are beginning to shift the focus toward how long to hold rates steady at sufficiently restrictive
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