Stocks Slip Ahead of July CPI Report: Stock Market Today
The latest inflation updates roll in this week and Wall Street is watching to see how much of an impact tariffs are having on cost pressures.
Stocks were choppy to start the week as market participants looked ahead to this week's key inflation updates. The data starts rolling in on Tuesday morning with the release of the July Consumer Price Index (CPI) report.
The June CPI report showed that President Donald Trump's tariff policies are starting to have a moderate impact on inflation.
And over the next few months, Goldman Sachs economists "expect tariffs to continue to boost monthly inflation and forecast monthly core CPI inflation between 0.3% and 0.4%."
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For July, specifically, the group anticipates a rebound in used car prices, though it believes new car prices fell 0.2%. The economists also expect upticks in airfare and categories with outsize exposure to tariffs, including household furnishings.
Overall, Goldman economists are eyeing a 0.3% monthly increase in headline inflation – unchanged from June thanks to lower energy prices – and a 0.3% rise in core CPI, higher than the 0.2% from the month prior.
Tuesday also marked the end of a trade truce between the U.S. and China, though the White House announced this afternoon that the deadline will be extended by 90 days.
Nvidia, AMD will give U.S. a cut of AI chip sales
In an effort to assist in easing semiconductor export restrictions, Nvidia (NVDA, -0.3%) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, -0.3%) agreed to give the U.S. 15% of the revenue the two companies get from selling their AI chips to China.
"We believe the potential combined annualized revenue run rate for these chips to be about $30 billion to $35 billion, which would essentially result in about a $5 billion revenue tax over the next year," says CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino.
The analyst notes that "the tax will have a negative impact on profit margins tied to China sales," but he believes this is "worth the cost" of "reentry into the second-largest GPU market" in the world.
C3.ai stock spirals after "unacceptable" earnings
In other AI news, C3.ai (AI) plunged 25.6% after the enterprise artificial intelligence software firm reported preliminary results for its fiscal first quarter.
The company said it expects total revenue for the three-month period to arrive between $70.2 million and $70.4 million, well below the $101.7 million analysts were calling for and the $87.2 million it reported the year prior.
CEO Thomas Siebel said that the sales results "were completely unacceptable," and that the company's restructuring, which was announced in a separate press release, will accelerate growth going forward.
C3.ai will release its full fiscal Q1 results after the market closes on Wednesday, September 3.
The tech stock is now down more than 50% for the year to date and most of Wall Street remains on the sidelines. Of the 14 analysts covering AI who are tracked by S&P Global Market Intelligence, four say it's a Strong Buy, four have it at Hold and six call it a Sell or Strong Sell. This works out to a consensus Hold recommendation.
As for the main indexes, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 0.3% to 21,385, the broader S&P 500 shed 0.3% to 6,373, and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back 0.5% to 43,975.
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