New York, April 12 (BNA): Stocks rose on Wednesday after the latest update to show continued low inflation, reports the Associated Press.
The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in the afternoon after bouncing between small gains and losses earlier. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 99 points, or 0.3%, at 33,785, as of 12:44 PM ET, while the Nasdaq Composite was relatively unchanged.
The main focus on Wall Street for more than a year has been soaring inflation and the amount of painful medicine the Fed will have to offer to contain it.
A report Wednesday morning showed that prices at the consumer level were 5% higher last month than a year earlier.
This is still well above the Fed’s comfort level, and some of the underlying trends in the data were worrying as well.
This affected the financial markets. But on the upside for investors, the overall inflation figure was still better than the 5.2% that economists had expected. It also represents a sustained slowdown from last summer’s peak of inflation.
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