{"id":61887,"date":"2026-05-13T09:09:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/dowjonestodaydow-jones-slips-as-hot-cpi-data-fuels-rate-concerns-healthcare-stocks-lead-defensives\/61887\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:09:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T13:09:32","slug":"dowjonestodaydow-jones-slips-as-hot-cpi-data-fuels-rate-concerns-healthcare-stocks-lead-defensives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/dowjonestodaydow-jones-slips-as-hot-cpi-data-fuels-rate-concerns-healthcare-stocks-lead-defensives\/61887\/","title":{"rendered":"[DowJonesToday]Dow Jones Slips as Hot CPI Data Fuels Rate Concerns; Healthcare Stocks Lead Defensives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/stockmarketwatch.com\/indices\/dowjones\/today\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Dow Jones Today\">Dow Jones<\/a> Industrial Average<\/strong> faced downward pressure during Wednesday&#39;s session as investors grappled with fresh economic data. <strong>Dow Futures (YM=F)<\/strong> was down <strong>251.00 (-0.5033%)<\/strong> points today, reflecting a cautious tone across Wall Street. The central narrative is dominated by the <strong>April Consumer Price Index (CPI)<\/strong> report, which revealed that inflation remains stubbornly above the <strong>Federal Reserve&#39;s<\/strong> target. This &quot;sticky&quot; inflation data has fueled speculation that the central bank may delay interest rate cuts until much later in the year, causing a rotation out of high-valuation tech stocks and into defensive sectors.<\/p>\n<p>Leading the gains today was UnitedHealth Group (<a href=\"\/stock\/UNH\">UNH<\/a>), which was up <strong>3.01%<\/strong> to <strong>$396.39<\/strong>, providing a necessary cushion for the index. Other healthcare and consumer staple giants followed suit, with Amgen (<a href=\"\/stock\/AMGN\">AMGN<\/a>) up <strong>2.03%<\/strong> and Walmart (<a href=\"\/stock\/WMT\">WMT<\/a>) up <strong>1.91%<\/strong>. Strong demand for stability also pushed Coca-Cola (<a href=\"\/stock\/KO\">KO<\/a>) up <strong>1.60%<\/strong> and Verizon (<a href=\"\/stock\/VZ\">VZ<\/a>) up <strong>1.57%<\/strong>. JPMorgan Chase (<a href=\"\/stock\/JPM\">JPM<\/a>) also showed resilience, up <strong>1.52%<\/strong>, as higher rates often bolster net interest margins for major lenders.<\/p>\n<p>On the losing side, Salesforce (<a href=\"\/stock\/CRM\">CRM<\/a>) plummeted, down <strong>3.39%<\/strong> to <strong>$171.31<\/strong>, as rising yields dampened the present value of future earnings for software companies. International Business Machines (<a href=\"\/stock\/IBM\">IBM<\/a>) was down <strong>1.66%<\/strong>, while Caterpillar (<a href=\"\/stock\/CAT\">CAT<\/a>) fell <strong>1.62%<\/strong> on fears that prolonged high rates could stifle global industrial activity. Even tech titan Microsoft (<a href=\"\/stock\/MSFT\">MSFT<\/a>) felt the heat, down <strong>1.23%<\/strong>, highlighting the broad-based retreat from the technology sector that has led the market higher recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Dow Jones Industrial Average faced downward pressure during Wednesday&#39;s session as investors grappled with fresh economic data. Dow Futures [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"rank_math_schema_Article":[],"rank_math_focus_keyword":[],"rank_math_description":[],"financial_data_references":[],"stock_symbols_mentioned":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[17736],"tags":[33,75,373,3712,4223,4350,17074],"class_list":["post-61887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-snippets-dow-jones","tag-msft","tag-crm","tag-unh","tag-cpi","tag-inflation","tag-dow-jones","tag-stock-market-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.stockmarketwatch.com\/stock-market-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}