• Stocks slide as investors await key data. A highly anticipated consumer inflation report sent the major indexes into the red on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down over 0.3% after muted trading throughout the session, while the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite also fell around 0.3%.
• CPI report today at 8:30AM ET. The consumer price index is expected to show a 2.7% 12-month inflation rate for November, up one-tenth of a percentage point from October. Core CPI is forecast at 3.3%, or unchanged from October.
• A potential Hershey buyout. Mondelez International Inc. is exploring an acquisition of US chocolate maker Hershey Co., in a potential deal that could create a food giant worth $50 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
• U.S. Steel drops after President Biden says he will block sale. President Joe Biden plans to formally block the $14.1 billion sale of United States Steel Corp. to Nippon Steel Corp. on national security grounds once.
• Google unveils new quantum chip. Shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, went higher after the company unveiled a new chip the day before that it says is a breakthrough in quantum computing.
• SpaceX gets new valuation. Investors have agreed to purchase as much as $1.25 billion of insider shares in a transaction valuing the rocket and satellite maker at about $350 billion, according to an internal email seen by Bloomberg.
• Crypto rattles as Bitcoin pulls back. Bitcoin dropped from a high above $101,000 to just around $94,000. The drop saw nearly $3 billion in margin trades liquidated.
• Oracle shares dropped. Oracle shares fell around 7% after its quarterly revenue fell short in the face of tough cloud competition.
• Super Micro Computer shares plummeted. Shares fell as much as 9.8% on Tuesday after CEO Charles Liang said at a Reuters conference that he does not believe the company will be delisted from the Nasdaq.
• Walgreens shares popped. Shares jumped 20% after the Wall Street Journal reported the company is in talks to sell itself to private equity firm Sycamore Partners. According to the outlet, a deal could be completed early next year.

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"The Fed should be in a position to move forward on the December rate cut, but [the final] CPI report now becomes another significant milestone in the policy-adjustment calculus." - Rick Rieder, chief investment officer of global fixed income at BlackRock.

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In the Spotlight

Kroger Merger Faces Hurdle.

A Federal judge in Oregon blocked Kroger’s proposed $25 billion tie-up with Albertsons, ruling that the largest merger in US supermarket history would limit competition and harm consumers. "On balance, the Court finds that both qualitative and quantitative evidence shows that defendants engage in substantial head-to-head competition and the proposed merger would remove that competition," the court filing read. "As a result, the proposed merger is likely to lead to unilateral competitive effects and is presumptively unlawful."

Alphabet Shares Explode After Google Unveils Breakthrough Quantum Chip

Alphabet shares rose Tuesday after the company’s unveiling of “Willow,” its latest quantum computing chip. “Willow,” is a quantum computing chip that the company said performed significantly better on a quantum computing benchmark than its predecessor did in 2019. Willow, like similar quantum chips, uses uncertain “qubits” to represent numbers instead of transistors, which are used on traditional semiconductors. The company's announcement was praised on social media by several technology business figures, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.