Stocks slip on Wall Street as oil and inflation worries rise

Back down go stocks, and back up goes oil as Wall Street’s roller-coaster ride continued Thursday amid uncertainty about where inflation, interest rates and the global economy are heading.

The S&P 500 slipped 0.8% in early trading, on pace for its fifth drop in the last six days. It’s another sharp reversal for U.S. stocks, which just a day earlier surged to their biggest gain since June 2020 when a tumble for oil prices seemed to take pressure off the world’s already high inflation.

But oil prices rose roughly 2% Thursday to recover some of their steep slide, just as waves of other reports buffeted markets. The European Central Bank said high inflation will push it to wrap up its bond-buying program meant to boost its economy faster than expected.

In the U.S., a report showed that consumer prices leaped 7.9% in February from a year earlier. It’s the sharpest spike since 1982, though the reading was largely within expectations.

Altogether, the forces caused a swift reversal in the market’s moves from a day before.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 164 points, or 0.5%, to 33,122, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time. The Nasdaq composite was 1.3% lower. Stocks again were taking their cue from oil prices, and the losses had been larger in the morning when crude prices were higher.

European stocks were hit even harder, with Germany’s DAX losing 2.9% and France’s CAC 40 down 2.8%. Asian stocks earlier in the day mostly rose.

Such swings have become common in recent weeks, after Russia’s attack on Ukraine raises worries about how high prices will go for oil, wheat and other commodities produced in the region. Markets were already on edge before the war began because high inflation is pushing central banks to raise interest rates for the first time in years and halt programs launched to support the global economy after the pandemic struck.

Analysts said the U.S. inflation report, while eye-popping, likely wouldn’t have much of an effect on markets. The 7.9% leap was exactly what economists were forecasting. If anything, it may have offered some relief because it didn’t hit the 8% threshold that could feel even worse.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which tracks expectations for inlation and economic growth, slumped immediately after the inflation report’s release but then wavered. It was recently at 1.98%, up from 1.94% late Wednesday.

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“Markets seem to have latched onto a couple of slightly less dismal clues as an excuse to rally hard,” said ING economists in a report. “The basis for that optimism — it’s actually pretty thin.”