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A surprise reading on inflation (a surprisingly good reading) sent the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEMKT: VOO) soaring this morning, up 0.6% premarket.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the producer price index (PPI), which reflects wholesale prices in the U.S., declined 0.1% in August. This was 20 basis points less than economists had been predicting, and follows a downward revision to 0.7% for July’s wholesale price inflation.
Both total PPI, and core PPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, declined by 0.1%.
What does this mean for investors? Well, last week we saw two reports indicating weak hiring in the U.S., indicative of an economy slowing enough that it might frighten the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. Now we have at least one inflation reading (expect another, the consumer price index, tomorrow) that suggests it might be possible to lower interest rates safely, without exacerbating inflation rates.
Basically, the Fed just got a green light to cut interest rates at its Federal Open Markets Committee meeting on September 17. And because lower interest rates are generally viewed as “good” for the stock market, investors are responding by buying stocks this morning.
Earnings
S&P 500 component company Oracle (NYSE: ORCL | ORCL Price Prediction) missed earnings by a penny last night, reporting $1.47 per share in profit for its fiscal Q1 2026, on sales of $14.9 billion — also below expectations.
But Oracle told investors its cloud database revenue surged 15x in size last quarter as customers that include Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG), Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) gobbled up AI server time. Oracle forecast that its cloud infrastructure revenue will grow another 14x in size through 2030, to $144 billion.
And Oracle stock is trading up 33% premarket on the news.
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