Stocks moved lower on Wall Street on Friday after a report showed inflation is slowing, though not by as much as hoped. The Dow fell 305 points to 33,476, the S&P 500 fell 29 points to 3,934, and the Nasdaq fell 77 points to 11,004. All the losses were under 1%, though the Dow fell for the week by 2.7%, the S&P by 3.3%, and the Nasdaq by 3.9%, per CNBC. On Friday, stocks around the world weakened after a US government report showed prices being paid at the wholesale level were 7.4% higher in November than a year earlier. That's a slowdown from October's wholesale inflation rate of 8.1%, but it was still slightly worse than economists expected, per the AP.
The Fed's next decision on rates is scheduled for next week, and the general expectation is for it to raise rates by another half of a percentage point. Friday's economic data did not sway Wall Street's expectations on that, not after several Fed officials hinted recently they may step down from their string of four straight hikes of 0.75 percentage points. Such a dial-down would mean less added pressure on markets and the economy. Even so, the Fed has said it may still take rates higher than markets expect before taking a pause. The last big piece of data on inflation before the Fed's next decision arrives on Tuesday, when economists expect the consumer price index to show that inflation slowed to 7.3% last month from 7.7% in October.
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