The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July was released this morning. Economists had expected to see an increase of 3% year-over-year, the same rate as June, with core CPI expected to fall to 3.2% from 3.3% in June, its lowest level since 2021. Family-owned candy giant Mars is set to acquire Kellenova (K) in a massive deal worth nearly $36 billion. Kellenova brands include Pringles, Eggo, and Pop-Tarts. Trending Tickers on Yahoo Finance include Starbucks (SBUX), Chipotle (CMG), and UBS Group (UBS).

Top guests today include:
8:35 AM: Nathan Sheets, Citi Chief Global Economist &
Nicholas Brooks, ICG Head of Economics and Investment Research
8:45 AM: David Rogal, BlackRock Portfolio Manager, Fundamental Fixed Income Group
9:05 AM: Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist
9:30 AM: Brent Thill, Jefferies Senior Analyst
9:45 AM: Krishna Guha, Evercore ISI Vice Chairman
9:50 AM: Bill Baer, Former US Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division
10:15 AM: Aaron Alt, Cardinal Health CFO
11:00AM: Ken Mahoney, Mahoney Asset Management CEO
11:30 AM: Richard Gelfond, IMAX CEO

A rocker, a president and the “Lady in Red.”

New York City Councilman Justin Brannan is eyeing a run at the Big Apple’s Comptroller’s seat in next year’s election, The Post has learned.

The Brooklyn Dem, who currently serves as the council’s finance chair, filed paperwork with the Campaign Finance Board Tuesday allowing him to start fundraising for the already hotly contested seat, online records show.

The lawmaker also registered a political committee JB for NYC, which mirrors his former committees, Relect JB and Friends of JB, record show.

Calls to Brannan, 45, were not immediately returned.

It was unclear if he was formally running or exploring what traction he could get as a candidate.

With almost a year until next year’s primaries, the field of candidates vying to be the city’s next financial watchdog is already crowded with current Comptroller Brad Lander entering the race against Mayor Eric Adams.

On Monday, Queens Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar formally announced her run with little fanfare after reporters noticed her camp had posted her campaign video a bit prematurely.

The two are expected to take on Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who also signaled interest by filing paperwork for the role last week, but told The Post he was informally exploring the bid.

Brannan is termed limited in the council and has been weighing his next political steps for months now with the comptroller being on the shortlist with his experience as finance chair, according to sources.

Over the past few years, the councilman has been a leading voice on budget issues and was key in the push for a property tax rebate in 2022.

He’s also served as a foil to Adams and his administration, sparring over budget cuts during the migrant crisis, which came to a head this year over the widely different projections in tax revenue.

Brannan, a hardcore punk rocker known for his role in Most Precious Blood, reps the 47th council district in Bay Ridge nabe of Brooklyn.

It was rumored that Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso could also join in the race but told Pix11 on Monday he was staying put.

U.S. stocks rallied Tuesday to one of their best days of the year after the first of several highly anticipated reports on the economy this week came in better than expected.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.7% for its third-best day of 2024 after the U.S. government reported inflation at the wholesale level slowed last month by more than economists expected. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 408 points, or 1%, and the Nasdaq composite clambered 2.3% higher.

High inflation has been the scourge of shoppers and financial markets for years. It finally looks to be slowing enough to get the Federal Reserve to ease up on high interest rates, which the Fed has been keeping at economy-crunching levels in order to stifle inflation.

Treasury yields eased in the bond market following the inflation data, as traders remain convinced the Fed’s meeting next month will bring the first cut to interest rates since the COVID crash of 2020. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 3.84% from 3.91% late Monday.

All is not clear, though. On Wednesday, the U.S. government will deliver the latest monthly update on inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling, which could be less encouraging. And on Thursday will come a report showing how much U.S. shoppers are spending at retailers.

A growing worry on Wall Street is that the Fed may have kept interest rates too high for too long and undercut the U.S. economy by making it so expensive to borrow money. The economy is still growing, and many economists don’t expect a recession, but a sharp slowdown in U.S. hiring last month raised questions about its strength.

Such questions weigh because even cuts to interest rates haven’t been enough for stocks to rise significantly in the ensuing 18 months if a recession hits, according to Chris Haverland, global equity strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Home Depot on Tuesday delivered stronger profit for the spring quarter than analysts expected, but it also said high interest rates and uncertainty about the economy are keeping some customers from spending on home improvement projects.

The retail giant lowered its full-year forecasts for an important measure of sales and for profit, even though it topped expectations for the second quarter. Its stock rose 1.2% after flipping earlier between modest gains and losses.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Starbucks soared 24.5% after it convinced Brian Niccol to leave his job as CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill to take over the coffee chain. He will start as chairman and chief executive next month and will replace Laxman Narasimhan, who is stepping down immediately.

Chipotle, meanwhile, dropped 7.5%. Niccol has been its chief executive since 2018 and its chairman since 2020, and he helped its stock rise more than 240% for the five years through Monday. That tower’s over the S&P 500’s 96% return including dividends. Chipotle said its chief operating officer, Scott Boatwright, would be its interim CEO.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were modestly higher across much of Europe and Asia. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was an outlier and jumped 3.4%.

Japan’s market has been viciously volatile recently, including the worst drop for the Nikkei 225 since the Black Monday crash of 1987. It’s been swinging since a hike to interest rates by the Bank of Japan forced many hedge funds and other investors to abandon a popular trade all at once, where they had borrowed Japanese yen at cheap rates to invest elsewhere. The forced selling that followed the surge in the Japanese yen’s value reverberated around the world.

But a promise last week by a top Bank of Japan official not to raise rates further as long as markets are “unstable” has helped calm the market.

Another worry that’s made Wall Street so shaky the last month is concerns that investors went overboard in their mania around artificial-intelligence technology and took the prices of Big Tech and AI-related stocks too high.

Nvidia, the company whose chips are powering much of the move into AI, has been at the center of the action. After soaring more than 170% through the year’s first six and a half months, it plunged more than 20% over the ensuing three weeks.

On Tuesday, Nvidia rose 6.5% and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500. All the other stocks in the small group known as the “Magnificent Seven” also climbed. They almost singlehandedly pushed the S&P 500 to dozens of all-time highs earlier this year, even as high interest rates weighed on much of the rest of the stock market.

Unlike much of the early part of this year, it wasn’t just the Magnificent Seven rising Tuesday. Wall Street’s rally was more widespread, and nearly 85% of the stocks in the S&P 500 rose. The smaller stocks in the Russell 2000 index also climbed 1.6%.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 90.04 points to 5,434.43. The Dow added 408.63 to 39,765.64, and the Nasdaq composite gained 407.00 to 17,187.61.