Stock market today: Wall Street points lower ahead of closely watched consumer inflation data

Wall Street lurched toward minor losses before the opening bell Wednesday as markets awaited the last batch of inflation data before the Federal Reserve meets next week, when most expect U.S. central bank officials to approve an interest rate cut.

Futures for the S&P 500 ticked down about 0.1% in premarket, while futures for the Dow Jones industrials lost 0.3%.

The Fed is turning its focus away from stifling high inflation and toward protecting the labor market and broader economy. It’s unclear how much the Fed will cut the federal funds rate, which has been sitting at a two-decade high.

Reports coming this week on U.S. inflation could influence the size of the Fed’s expected rate cut. A worst case scenario for the Fed would be if inflation were to reaccelerate just as the job market is weakening, because attending to both of those problems would require conflicting moves.

Economists expect the report on inflation to show prices for U.S. consumers were 2.6% higher in August than a year earlier. That would be a slowdown from July’s inflation rate of 2.9%.

On Thursday, the government shares its most recent data on inflation at the wholesale level, before it reaches consumers.

Investors were also watching for any market impact from Tuesday night’s debate between the U.S. presidential candidates, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.

Trump attacked Harris for the inflation seen under the Biden-Harris administration, a major liability for the vice president. But he quickly turned his answer to warning about immigrants coming into the country — one of his go-to campaign issues.

Trump called his proposed tariffs a way to make other countries pay for what he has long argued is an imbalance that hurts the U.S. Harris called the tariffs an effective national sales tax.

There were few, if any, indications that the debate was impacting broader financial markets Wednesday. However, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group were down a hefty 12% in premarket trading.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — which Trump has been championing in recent weeks, along with his own crypto company — fell modestly Wednesday. Bitcoin was down 1.5% to $56,725.

In other equities trading, Dave & Buster’s climbed around 13% after the restaurant and arcade chain easily beat Wall Street analysts’ profit targets. On the losing side was video game retailer GameStop, one of the original “meme stocks.” Its shares tumbled more than 9% after it badly missed revenue expectations as sales fell by nearly one-third from the same period a year ago.

Elsewhere, in Europe at midday, France’s CAC 40 added 0.3%, while Germany’s DAX rose 0.5% and Britain’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.2%.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 141.69 Japanese yen from 142.41 yen. The euro cost $1.1050, up from $1.1023.

The U.S. dollar fell at one point to 140-yen levels after a Japanese central bank official was quoted by Japanese media as indicating the Bank of Japan was getting ready to raise interest rates, a move anticipated for some time.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 dropped 1.5% to finish at 35,619.77, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.3% to 7,987.90.

South Korea’s Kospi slipped 0.4% to 2,513.37 after data showed the nation’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate edged down to 2.4% in August 2024 from 2.5% in July, the lowest level in a year as the number of unemployed people declined.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng dipped 0.7% to 17,108.71, while the Shanghai Composite slipped 0.8% to 2,721.80.

In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude rose $1.55 to $67.30 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gained $1.46 to $70.65 a barrel.

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