Wall Street stagnant ahead of reports

Consumer inflation update, Q1 profit reports on the way

NEW YORK — U.S. stock indexes held at a near standstill again on Tuesday, as traders made their final moves ahead of some potentially market-moving reports.

The S&P 500 edged up by 7.52 points, or 0.1 percent, to 5,209.91 after barely budging the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial

Average slipped 9.13 points, or less than 0.1 percent, to 38,883.67, while the Nasdaq composite rose 52.68, or 0.3 percent, to 16,306.64.

Treasury yields eased in the bond market ahead of Wednesday’s update on inflation at the U.S. consumer level. This week will also bring other reports on inflation, while big U.S. companies will start delivering their reports for how much profit they made during the first three months of the year.

The question hanging over Wall Street is whether inflation will cool enough to persuade the Federal Reserve to deliver the cuts to interest rates that traders are craving.

Doubts have crept in after a series of hotter -than- expected reports on the economy, and traders now expect just two or three cuts to rates this year.

The Fed’s main interest rate has been sitting at its highest level in more than two decades, and the fear is that rates left too high for too long can cause a recession.

If fewer cuts arrive this year, the onus will be on companies to deliver strong growth in profits to justify the nearly 25 percent leap for the S&P 500 since the end of October. Critics say stock prices look expensive on several measures, and either profits need to rise or interest rates need to fall to make them look more reasonable.

Strategists at Bank of America are looking for Wednesday’s inflation update to show a cooldown after ignoring food and energy prices, which can zigzag sharply. Such a result probably would increase traders’ expectations for a cut to rates in June, which the market sees as slightly better than a coin flip’s probability.

While a jump in oil prices this year has raised worries about a feed-through into inflation, oil probably would need to rise “well above levels seen even in the peak Russia-ukraine commodity price spike for a meaningful impact on core inflation,” the Bank of America strategists said in a Bofa Global Research report.

A barrel of benchmark U.S. crude fell $1.20 to settle at $85.23.