Traders work on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S., Dec. 17, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Stocks rose on Thursday as Wall Street weighed the latest inflation data, which came in lighter-than-expected.
Micron Technology jumped 13% after the semiconductor play topped Wall Street estimates on the top and bottom lines for the fiscal first quarter and offered a strong revenue forecast for the current period. Micron helped rekindle the artificial intelligence trade, which has seen weakness in recent sessions.
The delayed November consumer price index report – the first one issued to the public after the U.S. government shutdown ended last month – showed that the headline annual inflation rate was 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The 12-month rate for core CPI, which excludes food and energy, was 2.6%. Economists polled by Dow Jones had expected the rate for the headline measure and core CPI to come in at 3.1% and 3%, respectively.
The report, which didn’t include month-over-month percent changes, was pushed back from its original release date of Dec. 10. The BLS had canceled the release of the October inflation report in late November as a result of the longest-ever U.S. government shutdown, meaning that Thursday’s reading did not have all the usual data points of a standard CPI report. The agency said it wasn’t able to retroactively collect the October data, though it was able to use “nonsurvey data sources” to make the index calculations.
Given the lack of October comparison data, economists might not place too much significance on this reading as the beginning of a downward trend in inflation. Nonetheless, futures extended their gains after the report, as initial jobless claims were below what economists had estimated as well.
“We believe the combination of Fed easing, resilient growth, and AI advances will be supportive for equities, both in the U.S. and across international markets,” said Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, Americas chief investment officer and global head of equities at UBS Global Wealth Management.
Stocks are coming off of a rough trading session, pressured by sharp losses in leading semiconductor names tied to the artificial intelligence trade. The S&P 500 and the 30-stock Dow closed out their fourth negative day. The Nasdaq Composite was the laggard of the three major indices, losing 1.8%.
In the regular session, Oracle slid more than 5% after the Financial Times reported that the cloud infrastructure company’s primary investor pulled out of its $10 billion Michigan data center. Concerns about the high capital costs behind massive data center deals, such as Oracle’s, sent shivers throughout the market and led several chipmakers to decline in sympathy throughout the session. Broadcom lost 4.5%, while shares of Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices also fell.
Even as investors have been rotating away from tech names as of late, the sector is on pace to end 2025 with a roughly 19% advance.