Stock market today: Wall Street drifts as it waits for inflation data

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is quiet on Tuesday, and U.S. stock indexes are drifting in the runup to the highlight of the week for the market, the latest update on inflation that’s coming on Wednesday.

The S&P 500 was virtually unchanged in afternoon trading, a day after pulling back from its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 10 points, or less than 0.1%, as of 1:43 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.1%.

Tech titan Oracle dragged on the market and sank 7.7% after reporting growth for the latest quarter that fell just short of analysts’ expectations. It was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500, even though CEO Safra Catz said the company saw record demand related to artificial-intelligence technology for its cloud infrastructure business, which trains generative AI models.

AI has been a big source of growth that’s helped many companies’ stock prices skyrocket. Oracle’s stock had already leaped nearly 81% for the year coming into Tuesday, which raised the bar of expectations for its profit report and future growth.

C3.ai recovered from an early loss and rose 4.3%. It reported a smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The AI software company increased its forecast for how big a loss it expects to take this fiscal year from its operations.

In the bond market, Treasury yields ticked higher ahead of Wednesday’s report on the inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling. Economists expect it to show roughly similar increases as the month before. That and a report on Thursday about inflation at the wholesale level will be the final big pieces of data the Federal Reserve will get before its meeting next week, where many investors expect the year’s third cut to interest rates.

The Fed has been easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high since September to lift the slowing jobs market, after bringing inflation nearly down to its 2% target. Lower rates would help give support to the slowing job market, but they could also provide more fuel for inflation.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.23% from 4.20% late Monday.

Even though the Fed has been cutting its main interest rate, mortgage rates have been more stubborn and have been volatile since the autumn. That has hampered the housing industry, and homebuilder Toll Brothers’ stock fell 6% even though it beat analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue in the latest quarter.

CEO Douglas Yearley Jr. said the luxury builder has been seeing strong demand since the start of its fiscal year six weeks ago, an encouraging signal as it approaches the beginning of the spring selling season in mid-January

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Alaska Air Group soared 12.1% after raising its forecast for profit in the current quarter. The airline said demand for flying around the holidays has been stronger than expected. It also approved a plan to buy back up to $1 billion of its stock.

Vail Resorts rose 1.9% after the ski resort operator reported a narrower first-quarter loss than expected in what is traditionally its worst quarter.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in China after the world’s second-largest economy said its exports rose by less than expected in November. Stocks rose 0.6% in Shanghai but fell 0.5% in Hong Kong.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

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