Markets Keep Nudging Higher Ahead of Trade Deals, CPI

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Markets closed another session higher today, ahead of where the economic grist really hits the mill. This begins tomorrow with the May Consumer Price Index (CPI) report. Also, should trade talks between the U.S. and China — now going into Day 3 — bring about continued hope that we may see an upward catalyst for market participation.

Eventually, these days will start to feel the altitude of current valuations. The S&P 500 is now at its highest level since February 20th — when the index was moving rapidly in the opposite direction. But indexes shot up near session highs at the closing bell today. The Dow gathered +105 points, +0.25%, the S&P 500 +32 points, +0.55%, the Nasdaq — led by +8% gains in Intel INTC today and +10% for Tesla TSLA over the past two days — closed +123 points, +0.63%, and the Russell 2000 +11 points, +0.56%.

These indexes are now up +10-15% from April lows, and closing in on all-time highs set in late 2024. This is all well and good — as long as you’re not expecting the Fed to cut interest rates anytime soon — but at some point we’ll need more than just some encouraging words about pending trade deals. So far, that’s pretty much all there is.
 

Q1 Earnings Season Continues to Wrap Up: GME

Former celebrated “meme stock” GameStop GME posted mixed results after the closing bell today, beating on its bottom line by a penny to +$0.09 per share from the Zacks consensus, but coming up well short of expectations on the top line to $732.4 million and -17% year over year. Operations for the quarter in the U.S. were positive, but negative in Canada, Australia and Europe. Shares are down -5% in late trading on the news.

That’s still better than PetMed Express PETS, which announced it would delay fiscal Q4 earnings this afternoon. Expectations are for a slimmer loss per share from the year-ago quarter, but for quarterly revenues to tumble -27.5% from fiscal Q4 of last year. The report, and following conference call, are now scheduled for Monday. Shares are down -8% on this development.
 

What to Expect from the Stock Market Wednesday

Monthly CPI numbers, including a new Inflation Rate, are due out before tomorrow’s opening bell. These numbers are expected to bump up 10 basis points (bps) to +2.4% for May — still around 4-year lows. Back in June 2022 we had escalated to a +9.1% Inflation Rate, the highest in 40 years. Now we’re back to early-2021 levels.

The overall U.S. economy has demonstrated resilience many experts did not think it had. Analysts do not expect things to have fallen apart last month. That said, it’s hard to imaging much of a surprise in either direction on the Inflation Rate tomorrow. We’ll keep an eye on core CPI year over year, which reached +2.9% a month ago, still nearly a full point higher than optimum inflation levels according to the Fed.

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