U.S. stocks inch mostly higher ahead of CPI data

STORY: U.S. stocks ended mostly higher on Tuesday as investors braced for key inflation data and the start of earnings season later in the week.

The Dow closed essentially flat, the S&P 500 gained fractionally, while the Nasdaq added a modest three tenths of a percent.

Wednesday’s hotly anticipated Consumer Price Index was at the top of most investors’ minds as they tweaked expectations on the timing of the Federal Reserve’s first rate cut.

But Bill Fitzpatrick, Portfolio Manager at Logan Capital Management, says that while CPI will likely show still-sticky inflation, investors should shift their focus more to corporate earnings and how companies are managing higher costs.

“The earnings growth, the earnings season, everything we hear from the companies, really should be the driver of financial performance over the next few months here. Not the CPI numbers. Those are going to be a little bit higher than we would like, and we need to navigate through that environment.”

Analysts are expecting aggregate S&P 500 first-quarter earnings growth of 5% year-over-year, down from 7.2%.

First to report results Friday are JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. Shares of all three banks fell slightly on Tuesday.

Among other movers, cryptocurrency and blockchain-related stocks declined, tracking falling bitcoin prices. Exchange operator Coinbase Global shed about five and a half percent.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet gained more than 1%, pushing the company closer toward the $2 trillion market cap threshold.

And shares of Moderna jumped more than 6% after the drugmaker’s individualized cancer vaccine developed with Merck showed promise in an early-stage trial.

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