Dados para hoje nos states: Inflation-wary

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Inflation-wary

Stocks lower ahead of Producer Price Index report that could give clues on whether Fed will pause.

September 13, 2005: 6:20 AM EDT

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Concerns about inflation and next week's Federal Reserve meeting could weigh on stocks in early trading Tuesday.

U.S. stock futures were down in early trading, indicating a lower opening for stocks.

At 8:30 a.m. ET, investors will see the August Producer Price Index, the government's measure of prices on the wholesale level, and economists surveyed by Briefing.com are looking for those prices to have risen 0.7 percent, after a 1.0 percent gain in July. The so-called core-PPI, which excludes energy and food prices, is forecast to have climbed 0.1 percent after a 0.4 percent increase in July.

A steeper-than-expected rise could increase expectations of another quarter-point interest rate hike at the Fed's Sept. 20 meeting, after two weeks of hopes that the Fed would pause to assess the damage to the economy from Hurricane Katrina. The report comes ahead of Thursday's Consumer Price Index, which measures prices at the retail level.

Oil prices were little changed after falling to to below $63 a barrel briefly on Monday.

The October light crude futures contract for NYMEX gained 1 cent to $63.35 a barrel in electronic trading, while the October contract for Brent crude fell 4 cents to $61.76.

Major markets in Asia closed mixed Tuesday, even as Japan's Nikkei closed at a four-year high. Major European markets were lower in early trading.

Treasury prices were lower, lifting the yield on the 10-year note to 4.18 percent from the 4.17 percent level late Monday.

The dollar gained ground against on the euro and the yen ahead of the government's report on the U.S. trade deficit, which is also due at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists forecast the gap between imports and exports rose to $59.8 billion in July from $58.8 billion in June.

In corporate news, Nokia (Research), the world's leading maker of cell phones, upped its sales and earnings guidance for the third quarter.