U.S. stocks edged up at the open, trying to shake off renewed inflation concerns and expectations for President Donald Trump to announce reciprocal tariffs on Thursday.

Overall wholesale inflation, or a measure of prices businesses pay for goods and services, rose more than expected in January, but the core rate without energy and food was in line with economists' average forecast, the government said this morning.

The producer price report comes off the heels of a higher-than-expected consumer inflation report on Wednesday. The higher-than-expected inflation reports coupled with potentially steeper prices from Trump's tariff plans have made economists further pare back expectations for Federal Reserve rate cuts this year. More economists are now expecting only one or none.

The "report was hot, but probably lifted by temporary factors and residual seasonality," said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. It "doesn’t tell the Fed much new. They are on hold near-term, and are likely though not assured to make a single rate cut in 2025 if prices with lots of momentum like housing and residential rents continue to cool and offset upward pressures on inflation from post-election changes to economic policy."

Around 9:40 a.m. ET, the broad S&P 500 index inched up 0.049%, or 2.97 points, to 6,054.94; the blue-chip Dow gained 0.11%, or 47.56 points, to 44,416.12; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.18%, or 35.53 points, to 19,685.48. The benchmark 10-year yield dipped to 4.55%.

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Tariffs

Trump is expected to announce reciprocal tariffs on Thursday before he meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

These would be in addition to the 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports that Trump enacted earlier this week.

Reuters reported that Modi plans to avoid a trade war with the U.S. by preemptively cutting tariffs ahead of his meeting with Trump.

Corporate news

While investors come to grips with the idea that the Fed may be pausing rates for longer than originally expected due to renewed inflation concerns, company news continues to flow. Some early movers include:

• Reddit shares plunged almost 8% after the social media company's number of unique global daily active users, or those who visited the website at least once in a day, missed Wall Street estimates following Google altering its search algorithm.
• Cisco's results topped quarterly estimates and the networking company issued a bullish outlook. Shares of the networking hardware company added 4.22%.
• Applovin signed a deal to sell its mobile-gaming division. Shares of the mobile-advertising tech company soared 35.19%.
• Robinhood shares jumped 16.62% after its earnings in the last three months of the year topped analysts' expectations, boosted by trading around last November's presidential election.
• MGM Resorts stock rose 14.08% after quarterly revenues topped analysts' forecasts.
• The Trade Desk missed fourth-quarter revenue estimates and issued weak guidance. Shares slid 31.31%.
• Equipment maker Deere missed earnings estimates and said it expects sales to keep dropping. Its shares tumbled more than 4%.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin prices fell slightly despite a string of supportive news.

Trading platform Robinhood said its strong quarterly performance in the last three months of the year was due in part to $358 million in crypto-based revenues, which was 700% higher than the same period a year ago.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell also said in Congressional testimony on Wednesday the Fed doesn’t plan to get in the way of crypto banking and is now granting banks permission to serve cryptocurrency customers. This is a big deal because for years, crypto banks have been denied direct access to the Fed's payment system which basically means they couldn't be independent. Instead, they'd have to rely on bigger institutions to clear transactions or settle payments.

Digital currency exchange Coinbase is slated to report earnings later Thursday.

Bitcoin was last down 2.02% at $95,883.03.

Medora Lee is a money, markets, and personal finance reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] and subscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter for personal finance tips and business news every Monday through Friday morning.