New York, Jan 11 (AP) Stocks are gaining ground in early trading on Wall Street, building on a strong start to the year ahead of this week's highly anticipated update on inflation and corporate earnings reports.

The S and P 500 rose 0.5 per cent after the opening on Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq also rose. Technology stocks and retailers made solid gains. Bond yields were mixed and crude oil prices rose.

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Markets in Asia were mixed overnight and European markets gained ground. The next potentially market-moving event is Thursday's consumer inflation report for December.

Several big companies, including Bank of America and Delta Air Lines, are scheduled to report earnings on Friday.

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Wall Street pointed modestly higher before the bell on Wednesday as markets try to extend what's been a strong start to the year after a mostly dreadful 2022.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and futures for the S and P 500 each rose about 0.2 per cent.

US markets have been boosted so far this year by hopes that cooling inflation and a slowing economy may convince the Federal Reserve to ease off its markets-shaking hikes to interest rates.

Since early last year, the US central bank has been raising rates at a furious pace to bring painful inflation under control. Such moves risk causing a recession and hurt investment prices.

The next big event for markets is Thursday's update on consumer inflation for December. Economists expect the report to show price gains slowed further, to 6.5 per cent from 7.1 per cent in November and down from a peak of more than 9 per cent in the summer.

A worse-than-expected reading could dash the building hopes on Wall Street that the Fed may stop its hikes soon and perhaps even cut rates by the end of the year.

Some investors see the economy successfully walking the tightrope of slowing enough to snuff out high inflation but not so much as to cause a painful recession.

Past rate increases and high inflation have already hurt economic activity around the world, and the Fed has pledged to keep rates high for a while to ensure the job is done on inflation. It doesn't envision any rate cuts until 2024.

The World Bank said on Tuesday the global economy will come “perilously close” to a recession this year in its annual report.

In Europe at midday, France's CAC 40 rose 0.8 per cent while German's DAX added 0.9 per cent. Britain's FTSE 100 gained 0.6 per cent.

In Asian trading, Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 1.0 per cent to finish at 26,446.00.

Australia's S and P/ASX 200 gained 0.9 per cent to 7,195.30. South Korea's Kospi edged up 1.7 per cent to 2,255.98.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 0.5 per cent to 21,436.05, while the Shanghai Composite added 0.2 per cent to 3,123.52.

Shares of Fast Retailing Co., which operates the popular Japanese Uniqlo clothing retailer, rose 1.4 per cent after the company announced that it was raising the salaries of its workers by up to 40 per cent.

Big US companies will begin showing investors later this week how much profit they made during the last three months of 2022. Hot inflation has been squeezing customers' wallets and raising costs for businesses, threatening their earnings.

In energy trading, benchmark US crude picked up 54 cents to USD 75.66 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

It gained 49 cents to USD 75.12 a barrel on Tuesday. Brent crude, the international standard, gained 60 cents to USD 80.70 a barrel.

In currency trading, the US dollar rose to 132.76 Japanese yen from 132.13 yen. The euro was essentially flat at USD 1.0735.

On Wall Street on Tuesday, the S and P 500 rose 0.7 per cent while the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.6 per cent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite climbed 1 per cent. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)