Tuesday's early afternoon trade: Indexes dip ahead of inflation data

US stock indexes fell on Tuesday, undoing two strong days of gains that have settled some investor nerves ahead of a crucial reading on inflation. Strong US consumer price and retail sales data on Wednesday would fan fears over rising inflation and the pace of interest rate rises - the same worries that sparked a stock market rout after US jobs data on Feb. 2.
Among the biggest movers were sportswear retailer Under Armour, up more than 15 percent on strong quarterly sales, and AmerisourceBergen, up 8 percent after the Wall Street Journal reported Walgreens was seeking to buy out the drug distributor. "Investors are probably positioning with a bit of a risk-off mindset going into those two (economic data reports) tomorrow," said Matt Miskin, market strategist at John Hancock Investments.
"The core CPI estimate is a modest decrease from last month. But in the event that inflation does accelerate, that could lead volatility to continue as the Goldilocks environment may be under further pressure." After a wildly volatile week that pushed the market into correction territory, US stocks gained roughly 3 percent over Friday and Monday, their best two-day gain since June 2016. By 12:34 pm ET (1734 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped half a percent to 24,484.07, the S&P 500 0.3 percent to 2,648.06 and the Nasdaq Composite just 12.38 points, or 0.2 percent, to 6,969.58.
Ten of the 11 major S&P indexes were lower, led by losses in the technology and healthcare indexes. The CBOE Volatility Index, a widely-followed measure of short-term stock volatility and seen as a contributing factor itself to the selloff, was last trading at 26.39 points, half the 50-point mark it touched last week.