Stock market today: Live updates

Stocks rose at Wednesday’s open, as traders digested the latest U.S. consumer price index data.

The Dow gained more than 100 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained 0.5% and 0.8%, respectively.

— Fred Imbert

Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett said he doesn’t think he could run the Federal Reserve as well as Jerome Powell. The central bank leader’s aggressive rate hiking campaign has attracted criticism from those who say Powell waited too long to target rising inflation.

“You have to act on insufficient information, and you’ve got an ultimate responsibility to the American public,” Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

“It doesn’t mean you can stop recessions, it doesn’t mean that you can turn bad loans into good loans or anything else. But it does mean that you’ve got to keep the system working. And the system came close to stopping,” he added.

He added, “Thank heavens, you know, Jay Powell was there” in March 2020.

— Sarah Min, Alex Harring

Stock futures jumped after the March CPI report came in cooler than expected. Dow futures are now up more than 200 points, while Nasdaq 100 futures are up about 1%.

— Jesse Pound

Check out the companies making headlines before the bell on Wednesday:

• Shopify — Shares of the e-commerce company gained 2.4% after JMP upgraded Shopify to market outperform from market perform. The firm assigned the company a price target of $65 per share, implying a 45.1% upside from Tuesday’s close. 
• Triton International, Brookfield Infrastructure — Triton’s shares soared by more than 28% in early morning trading on news the company will be acquired by Brookfield Infrastructure. Triton shareholders will receive consideration valued at $85 per share in cash and stock. Brookfield’s stock price gained 2.15% on the announcement. 
• MongoDB — The software company’s stock price rose 2.8% in premarket trading after Morgan Stanley upgraded MongoDB to overweight from equal weight, citing the company’s leadership in cloud optimization initiatives. The firm raised its price target to $270, which suggests shares could gain 27.6% from Tuesday’s close.

Read here to see which other companies are making moves before the open.

— Pia Singh

Shares of shipping container company Triton International jumped 30% in premarket trading after announcing a deal to be acquired by Brookfield Infrastructure Partners in a take-private transaction.

The deal will value Triton’s equity at more than $4 billion, with an enterprise value of $13.3 billion.

Brookfield’s move to buy Triton comes after a weak year for mergers and acquisitions in 2022. There are signs that the market could rebound this year, including a Wall Street Journal report that Exxon Mobil is exploring acquisition targets.

— Jesse Pound

Bernstein analyst Richard J. Clarke named Hyatt Hotels a top pick for 2023, citing the company’s strength in the luxury category.

“Hyatt is the most skewed towards luxury in major hotel groups (1/3 rooms, 1/2 revenue), luxury occupancy has lagged other chain scales but is exhibiting the most pricing power, and will see the most recovery this year as international travel normalizes, especially from Asia,” Clarke wrote in a Tuesday note.

The stock is already off to a good start this year, climbing nearly 23% to about $111 per share. Bernstein’s price target of $135 suggests the stock could see a similar gain going forward.

— Jesse Pound, Hakyung Kim

Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge noted that “there doesn’t seem to be a ton of anticipation for the CPI on Wed (obviously people care about this number, but the eagerness is less than has been the case in prior months).”

“A big disconnect is expected to emerge in Mar (and continue going forward) between the headline reading (which the St sees falling 90bp M/M to +5.1%) and core (which matters a lot more and where economists are modeling a 10bp M/M increase to +5.6%),” he added. “A core number of 5.5% or less would be looked on favorably by stocks.”

Economists polled by Dow Jones expect a 0.2% increase in the consumer price index for March.

— Fred Imbert, Michael Bloom

Analyst Brennan Hawken upgraded shares to buy from neutral, noting that recent market uncertainty presents a tailwind for Goldman Sachs shares going forward.

“The firm also has an opportunity to accelerate the growth of their [asset and wealth management] platform and their transactional banking business through attractively priced M&A, especially if stress in the banking system presents further inorganic opportunities,” said Hawken. 

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Hakyung Kim

Investors are bracing for a potentially rocky ride as the corporate earnings season kicks off this week.

Analyst estimates point toward a 6.8% decline in first-quarter earnings compared with the same period last year – which would be the biggest fall since the second quarter of 2020.

Despite this gloomy outlook, there are a handful of stocks that appear to be bucking the bearish trend. CNBC Pro found the following seven stocks that appear to be going against the grain.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Ganesh Rao

Citi just added four names to its recommended stock lists amid the market volatility.

The Wall Street bank gave 70% upside to one of the companies — which is also backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

CNBC Pro subscribers can read more here.

— Weizhen Tan

European markets opened mixed Wednesday as investors await key inflation data from the U.S. set for release later in the day.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index moved between marginal gains and losses at the start of the trading day, with sectors and major bourses spread across negative and positive territory. Construction stocks were up 0.6%, while mining stocks dropped 1% after closing higher Tuesday.

— Hannah Ward-Glenton

European stock markets are expected to open mixed Wednesday.

Britain’s FTSE 100 is seen around 2 points lower at 7.780.2, Germany’s DAX is set to jump by 7.5 points to 15,661.4 and France’s CAC 40 is expected to drop 0.4 points to 7,394.8.

— Hannah Ward-Glenton

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said he believes inflation in the U.S. economy will near the central bank’s target of 2% in 2024.

Speaking at a town hall in Montana State University, he added that he’s “less optimistic” than the bond market, which are pricing in a recession soon to come in the U.S., and that markets were also seeing a faster decline in inflation than his expectations.

He also highlighted he expects inflation to come down to “the mid threes” by the end of 2023.

The U.S. consumer price index rose 6% year-on-year in February, in line with expectations. The March inflation report is slated for release overnight.

— Jihye Lee

The International Monetary Fund advised in its latest financial stability report said Japan’s central bank should have more flexibility in its scheme to maintain the yield on its 10-year Japanese government bonds around 0%.

“While allowing more flexibility in the yield curve control policy could have some repercussions in global financial markets, such a change not only is warranted to meet monetary policy objectives but could also help prevent abrupt policy changes later that could trigger larger spillovers,” the IMF said.

The international organization added that changes to the current monetary policy could have a wide range of repercussions.

“Changes to the Bank of Japan’s yield curve control framework may affect international financial markets through three channels: exchange rates, term premiums on sovereign bonds, and global risk premiums,” said the IMF in the report.

The yield on the 10-year JGB on Wednesday was at 0.466%, hovering around the yield curve control’s upper ceiling limit of 0.5%.

— Jihye Lee