NEW YORK — U.S. stocks are rallying following a surprisingly encouraging update on inflation. The S&P 500 was 0.9% higher in early trading Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 362 points, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.1% higher. Treasury yields tumbled in the bond market after the report showed U.S. consumer prices rose 3.3% last month versus a year earlier, slightly less than expected.
Consumer prices excluding volatile food and energy costs — the closely watched “core” index — rose 0.2% from April to May, the government said Wednesday. That's down from 0.3% the previous month and was the smallest increase since October. Measured from a year earlier, core prices rose 3.4%, below last month’s 3.6% increase and better than the 3.5% Wall Street was expecting.
Data on the economy have come in mixed recently, and traders are hoping for a slowdown that stops short of a recession and is just right in magnitude. Even though it came up a tad short of Wall Street's sales and profit targets, Oracle jumped 8% in off-hours trading after the chipmaker revealed a partnership with Google that would link the two company's cloud services. Investors were also encouraged by Oracle's bookings and strong full-year guidance.
The worry is that the Bank of Japan will be constrained from raising interest rates out of concern that higher prices will depress consumer spending, hurting the overall economy.