Stock market takes big dip following August inflation report

It was a bad day on Wall Street.

Stocks took a big dip on Tuesday in the wake of a new consumer-price report, which saw inflation jump more than expected in the month of August (even with a drop in gas prices), The Wall Street Journal reports.

All 30 of the stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and all 11 sectors of the S&P 500 took a plunge. More specifically, the Dow fell 1276, or 3.9 percent; the S&P fell 4.3 percent; and the Nasdaq plummeted 5.2 percent, CNN notes. It was the worst one-day performance since June 2020, fueled largely by concerns over how the Federal Reseve would respond to the newly-released data, the Journal writes. 

The Tuesday inflation numbers also arrived just ahead of next week's Federal Reserve meeting, "where the central bank is expected to deliver its third consecutive 0.75 percentage point interest rate hike to tamp down inflation," CNBC writes.

Though the August data suggests inflation is easing, the cooling is "at a slower pace than investors and economists had anticipated," the Journal adds. Economists that spoke with the Journal had expected prices to rise 8 percent annually in August, rather than 8.3 percent; still, last month's reading is down from the red-hot ratings from both July and June, which saw an 8.5 percent and a 9.1 percent annual rise in prices, respectively.