US stocks closed at record highs on Thursday as the latest reading on inflation showed consumer prices ticked up in August and jobless claims rose to their highest level in nearly four years. Together, the data helped set expectations for the pace of interest rate cuts this year.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) led stocks higher, rising 1.4%, or over 600 points, and closing above 46,000 for the first time. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose over 0.9%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) gained around 0.7% for its fourth-consecutive record close and first time closing above the 22,000 mark.

Thursday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) report for August exhibited some signs that President Trump's tariffs are impacting consumer costs, after the August reading on wholesale inflation came in cooler than expected.

Read more: The latest on Trump's tariffs

The CPI report showed inflation remained sticky last month, with the annual headline rate rising to 2.9%, compared with 2.7% in July. Month over month, prices rose 0.4% compared to July's 0.2% increase, an uptick compared to economists' expectations of a 0.3% monthly gain.

But in a shift from the past, markets are expected to shrug off the persistent price pressures.

The print isn't expected to dissuade the Federal Reserve from lowering rates at its meeting next week, as recent federal data has shown cracks in the labor market. An update on weekly jobless claims on Thursday continued to paint the picture of a weakening jobs landscape, with applications for unemployment benefits jumping to 263,000, the most in nearly four years.

Traders see a greater than 90% chance of a quarter-point reduction next week, and the vast majority expect the central bank to cut rates three times before the end of the year.

On the earnings front, Kroger (KR) and Adobe (ADBE) are on Thursday's docket.

US stocks climbed to record highs after the latest CPI print signaled sticky inflation, but likely not enough to dissuade the Federal Reserve from cutting rates next week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) rose 1.3% to close above 46,000 for the first time ever. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose over 0.8% to also notch a new high. The Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) increased about 0.7% to close above 22,000 for the first time ever as the tech-heavy index posted its fourth consecutive record this week.

Jobless claims rose more than expected this morning, a further sign of a weakening labor market. The print raised hopes that sticky inflation will be overshadowed by a weak jobs market, prompting Fed officials to cut rates by at least 25 basis points next week.

Thursday's CPI print showed customers are paying more for their electricity.

The electricity index rose 6.2% year over year in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest data released this morning.

On a month-over-month basis, electricity prices edged up 0.2%, while the natural gas index decreased by 1.6%. More than 40% electricity in the US is derived from natural gas, which rose roughly 13.8% on an annualized basis.

Upgrades to electricity grids and growing energy demand from data centers are some of the main drivers for price spikes.

Energy prices as a whole ticked up 0.7% in August, after dropping 1.1% in July.

Yahoo Finance's Francisco Velasquez reports:

Nvidia (NVDA) may be the belle of the AI ball, but Oracle (ORCL) is making a strong case it belongs on the same dance floor.

\\"It's tempting to switch that narrative,\\" Interactive Brokers chief strategist Steve Sosnick said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid. \\"But I'm still going to stick with whoever brought me to the dance, and that's Nvidia.\\"

\\"Bottom line is they are the ones still pumping out the chips that everybody needs and everybody wants,\\" he explained, adding that some of Nvidia's \\"biggest customers are still the biggest drivers.\\" Those include Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOGL), and Meta (META).

Still, the talk around the Street has been: Is Oracle emerging as a serious AI contender?

Read more here.

Warner Bros (WBD) stock jumped as much as 30% on Thursday afternoon after the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount Skydance (PSKY) is preparing a majority cash bid to acquire its rival.

The bid is backed by the Ellison family, according to the WSJ.

David Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is the chairman of the recently merged Hollywood studio giant Paramount Skydance.

Oracle stock (ORCL) ballooned by 35% on Wednesday after the company announced a blockbuster backlog for its AI enterprise cloud business, skyrocketing Larry Ellison’s fortune.

Shares of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba (BABA) jumped over 8% in midday trading Thursday after the company said it plans to raise $3.2 billion through the sale of a zero-coupon convertible bond.

According to Reuters, the bond will be the largest of its kind this year, surpassing DoorDash's $2.75 billion convertible senior note offering in May.

From Reuters:

Alibaba said it would use nearly 80% of the proceeds to expand data centres, upgrade technology and improve services to meet demand for cloud solutions.

It will invest the remainder in enhancing market presence and efficiency in e-commerce ventures.

Alibaba will offer the bond with a 27.5% to 32.5% conversion premium above its U.S.-listed share price, showed a term sheet seen by Reuters. The bond will mature on September 15, 2032, and convert into U.S.-listed shares.

Read more here.

Mortgage rates continued a furious slide over the past two months, with the average 30-year rate dipping to 6.35% in the week ending Wednesday, down from 6.5% the previous week.

Yahoo Finance's Claire Boston reports:

The latest leg down started on Friday, when 10-year Treasury yields, which closely track mortgage rates, plunged after the Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that the US added just 22,000 jobs in August. Revisions to earlier data also slashed job gains from May to July.

Treasury yields continued to drift downward Thursday following a surge in weekly jobless claims and inflation data largely coming in line with economists' expectations.

Mortgage rates have been drifting lower in recent weeks ahead of an expected rate cut from the Fed at its meeting next week. Traders see nearly 90% odds of a 25-basis-point move on Sept. 17. But mortgage rates could just as easily begin moving higher again, as they did last year after the Fed cut benchmark rates by 50 basis points in September.

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi reports:

Figure Technology Solutions (FIGR) co-founder and CEO Mike Cagney says his blockchain business is ready for the big-time.

\\"So if you think of something like the stock market, it's an easy example. Seven parties sit in between buyers and sellers of every transaction. Blockchain has the ability to distill that down just to two. Every time we swipe a debit card, five parties sit in between the buyer and seller. Blockchain can distill that down to two,\\" Cagney told me on Yahoo Finance's Market Catalysts (video above).

Figure Technology Solutions raised $787.5 million in its IPO this week. The company sold 31.5 million shares priced at $25, above the expected range of $20 to $22. At the IPO price, Figure's valuation was stamped at $5.3 billion.

The company was co-founded in 2018 by SoFi (SOFI) founder Cagney. A complicated business at first glance, Figure at its core is a blockchain platform that supports lending, trading, and investing in consumer credit and digital assets.

According to its IPO prospectus, its technology helps fund home equity loans in just 10 days compared to the industry average of 42 days.

Read the full story here.

Tesla (TSLA) stock gained roughly 4% Thursday, leading the \\"Magnificent Seven\\" Big Tech stocks.

Shares in the Elon Musk-helmed EV maker are up 7% over the past five trading sessions.

Tesla is expanding its energy storage business. On Monday night, the company unveiled a new energy storage unit called the MegaBlock, Yahoo Finance's Pras Subramanian reported. Tesla's products allow energy producers to offload excess energy when energy generation is highest and discharge that energy when generation is low.

William Blair analyst Jed Dorsheimer on Wednesday issued an optimistic note on Tesla given the news, saying the MegaBlock is a \\"gamechanger for grid storage customers and a strong data point from our bullish thesis on the energy storage business.\\"

Meanwhile, Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) rose fractionally on Thursday.

Bank of America analyst Ken Hoexter downgraded UPS (UPS) shares to an Underperform rating from Neutral and FedEx (FDX) stock to Neutral from Buy.

The analyst pointed to the impact of Trump's elimination of the de minimis exemption, a trade loophole that allowed less valuable packages to be imported into the US duty-free. The move has led to a plunge in postal traffic to the US.

Hoexter noted that UPS and FedEx, as airfreight carriers, accounted for \\"a sizable portion\\" of the 4 million daily packages imported to the US under the de minimis exemption.

\\"The removal of the de minimis exemption is expected to result in a muted air peak season in '25 as the tight peak markets in '23/'24 were driven by air demand from Chinese e-commerce players using the de minimis loop-hole,\\" he wrote.

UPS traded flat on Thursday, while FedEx climbed 1.2%.

Micron stock (MU) jumped roughly 8.5% Thursday morning to about $152, the biggest leap since April, when shares jumped roughly 19%. Thursday's gain put the chipmaker on track for a record close.

The gain came as Citi analyst Christopher Danely lifted his price target on shares to $175 from $150, maintaining his Buy rating on the stock.

Micron makes memory chips used in AI data centers and consumer electronics. For example, its various memory chips are used in Nvidia's (NVDA) GPUs (graphics processing units) and Apple's (AAPL) iPhones.

Danely said he expects Micron to report fourth quarter results in line with Wall Street's expectations on Sept. 23 and share an outlook for its first quarter revenue \\"well above consensus guidance.\\"

Danely expects Micron to guide for revenue of $13 billion for the first quarter of its 2026 fiscal year, while analysts polled by Bloomberg expect $11.8 billion. He expects earnings per share guidance of $3.23, above the $2.98 consensus estimate, per Bloomberg.

\\"We believe the continued memory upturn is being driven by limited production and better than expected demand, particularly from the data center end market,\\" he said, noting a \\"recent increase in orders from AI space.\\"

US stocks rose on Thursday after the latest inflation report and federal employment data.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose over 0.3%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) all gained around 0.4%. The gains put the S&P 500 and Nasdaq on track for fresh highs after a muted but record-setting session on Wednesday.

Bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its next policy meeting remained intact following Thursday’s consumer price report, but not because the central bank is seeing progress on one half of its dual mandate.

“The CPI, it’s still too firm,” New Century Advisors' Claudia Sahm told Yahoo Finance. “This is not consistent with making progress toward 2%. When [Fed officials] cut next week, they will not be cutting because we have good news on inflation. They’ll be cutting because we have bad news on employment.”

“The CPI, it’s still too firm,” New Century Advisors' @Claudia_Sahm says. “This is not consistent with making progress toward 2%. When they cut next week, they will not be cutting because we have good news on inflation. They’ll be cutting because we have bad news on employment.” pic.twitter.com/9fNi382dsZ

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) September 11, 2025

Weekly jobless claims rising to 263,000 also added to that picture, after revisions earlier this week showed the US economy employed 911,000 fewer people than initially thought.

As of 9 a.m. ET, traders held 90% odds of a quarter-point rate cut, according to the CME FedWatch tool, while odds of a larger half-point cut were 9.1%.

Weekly applications for unemployment benefits jumped to the highest level in nearly four years, as the US labor market continued to show signs of weakness.

Initial jobless claims for the week ending Sept. 6 jumped 27,000 to 263,000. That number was also well above economists' expectations.

The data is consistent with a gradually weakening labor market. Last week's August jobs report showed the economy added just 22,000 jobs in the month, while revisions continued to drag previous months lower. This week, the government said the US economy likely added 911,000 fewer jobs than were previously reported in the 12-month period ending in March.

The softening labor market has most traders certain of a rate cut from the Federal Reserve next week, with over 90% of bets on a quarter-point cut.

The closely watched August Consumer Price Index report is out. Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal reports what the data says:

Inflation edged higher in August, government data showed Thursday, as investors looked for signs of how much President Trump’s tariffs are filtering into consumer prices and what that means for how aggressively the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates.

The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 2.9% annually in August, a rise from July's 2.7% increase and on par with economists' expectations.

Month over month, prices rose 0.4% compared to July's 0.2% increase, an uptick compared to economists' expectations of a 0.3% monthly gain. The rise was driven by stickier gasoline prices and firmer food inflation.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy, rose 3.1% year over year in August, unchanged from July and in line with estimates. On a monthly basis, core prices climbed 0.3%, matching July’s increase, which was the strongest monthly rise in six months.

Read more here.

Kroger (KR) stock rose more than 1% in premarket trading after the supermarket operator beat earnings estimates and raised the low end of its full-year profit guidance.

The company reported earnings per share of $1.04, topping Wall Street’s estimates of $1 and above the $0.93 per share earnings it reported a year ago. Revenue remained flat year over year, coming in at $33.9 billion. Analysts were looking for $34.1 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Kroger adjusted its 2025 outlook and now sees same-store sales growth in a range of 2.7%-3.4%, above its previous range of 2.25%-3.25%. At the same time, it raised the low end of its earnings per share guidance by $0.10. Earnings per share are now expected to be between $4.70-$4.80 for the year.

Kroger has been undergoing a restructuring to streamline its operations under interim CEO Ron Sargent, including by cutting 1,000 jobs and closing some 60 stores. The company ousted longtime CEO Rodney McMullen in March following a probe into his conduct.

“Kroger delivered another quarter of strong results, which demonstrates the clear and measurable progress we’ve made on our priorities — to simplify our organization, to improve the customer experience and to focus on work that creates the most value,” Sargent said in a statement.

US stock futures rose modestly less than an hour before the closely watched Consumer Price Index (CPI) report is due to be released. Investors are awaiting signs of how much President Trump’s tariffs are impacting consumer costs and whether the report bolsters the case for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as soon as next week.

Yahoo Finance's Allie Canal previews what to expect:

August's Consumer Price Index (CPI) is expected to show inflation remained sticky last month, with headline prices rising at a faster clip than in July.

Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect headline CPI to rise 2.9% year over year, up from the 2.7% increase seen in July. On a monthly basis, prices are estimated to rise 0.3%, a touch firmer than July’s 0.2% gain.

On a \\"core\\" basis, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, the annual inflation rate for August is expected to tick up to 3.1%, unchanged from July. Core prices are projected to climb 0.3% month over month, also matching July’s gain, which was the strongest monthly rise in six months.

The release comes as the Fed debates its next interest rate move, with markets pricing in a 92% chance of a 25 basis point cut at its policy meeting next week, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Read more here.

Opendoor (OPEN) has named Shopify's (SHOP) COO Kaz Nejatian as its next CEO, news that sent the online housing marketplace's stock surging over 35% in premarket trading.

Opendoor is working to reinforce its reputation as a serious business after blowing up into a meme stock. Its shares tripled in July as new buyers rushed in, and have surged more than 250% this year so far.

Nejatian brings a track record in AI to the role, Opendoor said in a statement on Wednesday. It also said co-founders Keith Rabois and Eric Wu are returning to its board, with Rabois to take the role of chairman.

Previous CEO Carrie Wheeler stepped down in August, after Opendoor came under pressure from investors to oust her.

Economic data: Consumer price index (August); Average hourly earnings; Initial jobless claims (week ending Sept. 6); Continuing claims (week ending Aug. 30)

Earnings calendar: Adobe (ADBE), Kroger (KR)

Here are some of the biggest stories you may have missed overnight and early this morning:

The high-stakes CPI inflation report is on deck. What to watch.

Tough job market hits young workers hardest

Mexico hikes China auto tariff, S. Korea warns on US investment

Bets on deep rate cuts grow in face of CPI risk

Oracle stock marches higher, set to join $1 trillion club

Alibaba's $3.2 billion deal leads China tech funding spree

Ray Dalio touts gold as shield for US markets at risk of heart attack

How Oracle's Larry Ellison rode the AI 'tsunami'

Police search for killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk

It's a tough market for job seekers right now. It's an even tougher one for young people, Yahoo Finance's Hamza Shaban notes in today's Morning Brief.

He reports:

Looking around from the lowest rungs of the career ladder is an unpleasant scene: high unemployment, loss of purchasing power, and the onset of an AI era that is eradicating the idea of an entry-level job.

Education used to be a labor market refuge, a time-out to fortify your resume or hone a skillset while whatever recessionary forces blew their way through the economy. But even the safety of white-collar work is eroding.

Corporate America has pulled up its drawbridges, adopting a posture of post-pandemic hiring austerity, hastened on by the belief (or delusion) that AI models can automate the work historically performed by graduates or entire teams.

A recession that bears have warned is coming is, in a sense, already here. The less-experienced periphery of the workforce is in trouble.

Read more here.

Here's a look at some of the top stocks trending in premarket trading:

Synopsys Inc. (SNPS) stock rose 3% before the bell on Thursday, rebounding after the chip-design software maker suffered its worst single-day decline on record on Wednesday after warning that US export restrictions are contributing to a slowdown in China.

Oracle (ORCL) stock rose 1% in premarket trading on Thursday after it soared more than 36% Wednesday, marking shares' biggest daily gain since December 1992 and adding over $250 billion in market value to the company.

Tech stocks, Nvidia (NVDA) and Broadcom (AVGO), which supply semiconductors used in data centers, were also marginally up following Oracle's rally, extending gains from the previous session.