04:26 PM EDT, 09/10/2024 (MT Newswires) -- US benchmark equity indexes closed mixed Tuesday as traders awaited official consumer inflation data for August.

The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.8% to 17,025.9, while the S&P 500 increased 0.5% to 5,495.5. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2% to 40,737. Real estate paced the gainers among sectors, while energy saw the steepest decline.

In economic news, government data are likely to show Wednesday that US consumer inflation rose 0.2% sequentially and 2.6% annually last month, according to a Bloomberg-compiled consensus.

Markets are currently pricing in a 69% probability that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy committee will lower its benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points next week, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

"A downside surprise (in inflation) could lead to a more aggressive 50-basis-point rate cut in September, prompting markets to expect larger cuts in the future," Saxo Bank said in a Tuesday note to clients. "However, stubbornly high inflation or a rebound could dampen expectations for future rate cuts, especially with the upcoming election and potential fiscal spending increases."

The official producer prices report for August is scheduled to be released Thursday.

Small business optimism in the US waned last month driven by weak sales volume expectations, while inflation remained the most-pressing concern among business owners, the National Federation of Independent Business' latest survey showed.

The US two-year yield decreased 6.3 basis points to 3.60% Tuesday, while the 10-year rate lost 5.5 basis points to 3.64%.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil slumped 3.6% to $66.22 a barrel after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries reduced its global oil demand projections for 2024 and 2025.

In company news, Oracle (ORCL) shares jumped 11%, the best performer on the S&P 500. The software maker late Monday posted fiscal Q1 results that surpassed Wall Street's estimates, driven by strength in its cloud offerings.

Separately, Oracle and Amazon.com's ( AMZN ) Amazon Web Services on Monday announced a new offering that allows customers to access Oracle Autonomous Database on dedicated infrastructure and Oracle Exadata Database Service within the e-commerce giant's cloud-computing unit. Amazon ( AMZN ) shares increased 2.4% Tuesday, the top gainer on the Dow.

JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ) said the Street's net interest income consensus for 2025 is too high when considering interest rate cuts that are widely expected to begin at the Fed's monetary policy meeting next week. JPMorgan's ( JPM ) shares fell 5.2%, the worst performer on the Dow and among the worst on the S&P 500.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise ( HPE ) saw the steepest decline on the S&P 500, down 8.5%. The company late Monday said it had launched a public offering of $1.35 billion of its series C mandatory convertible preferred shares.

Gold rose 0.5% to $2,546 per troy ounce, while silver added 0.4% to $28.75 per ounce.