CNBC Business News Update - Market Midday: Stocks Mixed, Europe AND Canada Announce Retaliatory Tariffs, Consumer Inflation Ticks Lower For The First Time In 5 Months 3/12/25

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

From Wall Street to Main Street, the latest on the markets and what it means for your money. Updated regularly on weekdays, featuring CNBC expert analysis and sound from top business newsmakers. Anchored by CNBC's Jessica Ettinger.

I'm Jessica Evinger CNBC. Wall Street is mixed after two days of plunging markets. A softer read on inflation is helping even with retaliatory tariffs announced by Europe and by Canada today. The Dow is still in the red. It's down 150 points. It's being let lower by shares of Verizon, which are down 3% now. The S&P 500 index up 22 points this afternoon, a half percent. The Nasdaq is up 186 points, a little more than 1%. Nvidia shares are popping, they're up more than 5%. Tesla shares are up almost 7% this afternoon. Inflation came in lighter than expected for last month in the new CPI report for the consumer price index for February.

Inflation ticked lower after four straight months of inflation gains. February read consumer price index expected up three-tenths comes in a tenth light up two-tenths of a percent. Up two-tenths equals where we were in October to find a lower number. You're back to July of last year. CNBC's Rick Santelli and here's CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Leesman. Yeah, there was a concern we would come in on the high side. Everybody said they were looking for upside surprise. So it's really good to come in below here. You got some help from food up just zero to meat, poultry, fish and

eggs up 1.6% after 1.9 the month before. Dairy products were down. Energy was well behaved. You got a decline in airline fares down 4%. We don't know if that's a demand thing or that's just an energy thing being passed through. Weekly mortgage demand surged last week. Interest rates had dropped. Applications for a mortgage to buy a home rose 7% last week and were higher than the same week a year ago. The average rate on a 30 year fixed home loan today is 6 3 quarters percent, according to mortgage news daily. Oil prices have been swinging, but crude oil has fallen to its lowest in nearly four years recently below $66 a barrel before popping up to $67 today.

The soft price isn't because the U.S. is drilling more. And we have so much supply. It's because people are scared of a slowing economy. The main reason why prices are down is concerns about the global economy, obviously everything that's going on with tariffs, what that does for global growth. Drill baby drill is purely rhetoric. It hasn't led to any increase in US production.

We actually don't think it's gonna lead to any increase in production. So this is really about global growth concerns rather than supplies. Energy aspects, Amrita Sen on CNBC. Airlines say travel demand is waning, at least in the short term. American Airlines and Delta Airlines have each lowered their forecasts in this

current quarter, citing a weaker economic environment. A SpaceX Crew-10 rocket launches tonight to bring back two U.S. astronauts stuck on the International Space Station since last June. It'll actually take four astronauts up to the ISS and bring four back. The two stuck there went up on a Boeing rocket, a 10 day mission, then turned into nine months. The Boeing capsule returned empty because of safety concerns. NASA's Bush, Wilmore and Sunni Williams could be back on Earth as soon as Sunday. Jessica Edinger, CNBC.