Stock market today: Live updates

Factory output posted a better-than-expected showing in February as auto manufacturing ramped up, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday.

Industrial production increased 0.7% on the month, better than the 0.3% increase in January and ahead of the Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 0.3%. Manufacturing increased 0.9%, pushed by an 8.5% surge in motor vehicles and parts.

At the same time, capacity utilization rose to 78.2%, up 0.5 percentage point from January and better than the outlook for 77.8%.

—Jeff Cox

Investors should stay in the market despite the bouts of volatility, but should remain nimble, according to UBS.

“We retain our view that there is more to go in stocks, and we keep our conviction in the long-term opportunities in stocks linked to both the artificial intelligence and power and resources transformational innovations,” the firm’s chief investment office said in a note Monday.

UBS remains bullish on U.S. tech in the medium term, although it expects volatility to persist in the near term. Barring further tariff escalation, the equities appear to have priced in uncertainties, wrote the team, led by Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi.

In addition, a 10% correction in the Nasdaq Composite Index historically has proved to be a good support level and an upcoming Nvidia conference could be a catalyst to ease earning concerns, she said.

Existing tech investors should remain invested through the volatility and investors looking to add positions should buy the dip in quality artificial-intelligence stocks, it noted.

“We continue to see broad-based investment opportunities across the tech value chain, and particularly like AI infrastructure names with strong pricing power, and megacap platform and application beneficiaries,” Hoffmann-Burchardi said.

— Michelle Fox

Stocks opened in the red on Tuesday.

Shortly after the opening bell, the S&P 500 fell 0.4%, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 0.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also slid 121 points, or about 0.3%.

— Sean Conlon

Prices on U.S. imports accelerated in February as the U.S. and its trading partners engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff battle.

Import prices increased 0.4% on the month, the biggest move since April 2024 and faster than the Dow Jones forecast that the category would be unchanged. Export prices, however, were up just 0.1% as export air passenger fares tumbled 13%.

— Jeff Cox

— Sean Conlon, Samantha Subin

New construction was stronger than expected in February as mortgage rates moved lower, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

Privately owned housing starts totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.5 million, an 11.2% jump from January and better than the 1.38 million Dow Jones estimate, according to Census Bureau data.

Also, building permits totaled 1.46 million for the month, slightly above the forecast though 1.2% below January. Housing completions totaled 1.59 million, a 4% drop from January.

Mortgage rates declined steadily during the month, falling about 0.3 percentage point, according to Freddie Mac.

—Jeff Cox

Check out some of the companies making headlines in premarket trading.

• Ralph Lauren — The fashion stock added 2.8% following an upgrade at Goldman Sachs to buy from neutral. The bank said Ralph Lauren has limited exposure to tariffs versus its peers.

• Duolingo — The language learning application climbed 1.5% following an upgrade to outperform from Citizens JMP Securities. Analyst Andrew Boone noted that Duolingo’s Max subscriptions could be a boon for the stock moving forward, and also cited an attractive valuation as a bullish catalyst.

• Peabody Energy — Shares of the coal mining company gained 4.8% after President Donald Trump on Truth Social said he is authorizing energy production using coal.

Read the full list here.

— Brian Evans

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that while he can’t “guarantee” a recession will occur, he sees underlying strength in the economy that makes a retrenchment unlikely.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which aired Sunday, Bessent said he couldn’t “guarantee” a recession wouldn’t happen, a comment he said Tuesday was misconstrued and doesn’t represent the optimism he has over current prospects.

“What I can guarantee you is that there is no reason we need to have a recession,” he said on Fox Business’ “Mornings with Maria” show. “The economy in the first quarter is doing better than the media is reporting. … So the underlying economy is healthy. There is no reason we have to have a recession.”

— Jeff Cox

Barclays downgraded shares of PepsiCo to an equal weight rating from overweight on Tuesday, citing mounting pressure against the company’s U.S. food business as a reason.

With the U.S. food business accounting for 30% of Pepsi’s sales and 47% of its profits, analysts have been viewing Pepsi increasingly more as a U.S. packaged food company rather than a multi-national snacks and beverage company, Barclays wrote.

“As such, investors have largely looked past the constructive international story that emerged in recent years, and negative sentiment has instead been fully driven by the faltering of Frito-Lay North America,” analyst Lauren Lieberman added. “Therefore, the ability for PEP shares to re-rate higher is (rightly or wrongly) all about the fate of the US snacking business, and we are of the view there remains a heavy lift in order to shore up FLNA. What’s more, looking past the initial rebuild of FLNA, we see less upside inherent in sales and profit growth longer term compared to our outlook a few years ago when we upgraded PEP to Overweight.”

Lieberman accompanied the downgrade by lowering her price target to $156 from $168. This revised price forecast is just 3% above where shares of Pepsi closed on Monday afternoon.

Pepsi’s stock has slipped 12% in the past 12 months.

Baidu shares rose more than 2% in the premarket on Tuesday, extending its 9% gain from the previous session.

The gains come on the heels of the Chinese tech giant releasing two new artificial intelligence models on Sunday, one of which the company claims rivals DeepSeek’s R1 model.

The stock has significantly outperformed the broader market in 2025, seeing a more than 21% jump year to date through Monday’s close.

— Sean Conlon, Dylan Butts

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas upgraded electric vehicle manufacturer Lucid Group to an equal weight rating from underweight in a Monday note, citing a potential executable AI strategy.

Jonas left his price target for the stock unchanged at $3. This represents a nearly 39% upside from Lucid’s Monday closing level of $2.16. Shares of Lucid have tumbled more than 28% this year.

But going forward, Jonas believes that a new leadership team and its emerging AI strategy could boost the stock higher.

“Following the announced/ongoing changes in leadership, we believe Lucid has opportunity to execute an AI strategy leveraging strategic/sovereign partnerships within the context of the urgency to develop onshore manufacturing capacity for BEVs [battery electric vehicles] as the ‘socket’ for the AI ‘brain,'” he wrote.

Jonas added: “We see emerging scope for Lucid’s ability to play a role in the embodied AI theme as an reshored/’friend-shored’ manufacturer with access to capital and strategic relationships that uniquely position Lucid to straddle geopolitical hurdles in potentially partnering with both China and the West.”

— Lisa Kailai Han

Asia-Pacific markets rose on Tuesday, tracking gains on Wall Street, which ticked up after U.S. retail sales data appeared to ease recession concerns.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index led gains in Asia, rising 2.29% in its last hour on the back of strong moves in tech giants like Baidu, which was up 12.11% as at 3.45 p.m. local time.

Meanwhile, mainland China’s CSI 300 advanced 0.27% to end the day at 4,007.72.

Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 ended the day 1.20% higher at 37,845.42, while the broader Topix index rose 1.29% to 2,783.56.

Over in South Korea, the Kospi index closed flat at 2,612.34 while the small-cap Kosdaq added 0.27% to end at 745.54.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 ended the day flat at 7,860.40, paring gains from earlier in the session.

India’s benchmark Nifty 50 added 1.20%, while the BSE Sensex increased 1.07% as at 1.15 p.m. local time.

— Amala Balakrishner

Market participants have gotten a taste of what so-called stagflation would look like, according to Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz.

Stagflation refers to a combination of higher prices and slower economic growth. Though this economic setup has not been seen in the U.S. in half a century, President Donald Trump’s tariff policy has raised alarm that it could be coming back.

“I call it a whiff of stagflation,” El-Erian said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

El-Erian added that investors should keep an eye out for anything that can show growth is cooling toward 1%, which he called “stall speed.”

— Alex Harring

These are some of the stocks making notable moves in after-hours trading:

• Eastman Kodak — Shares of the photography-focused company popped 9.2% after net income and operational EBITDA both came in higher for the fourth quarter compared with the same period a year prior. Revenue, on the other hand, slipped about 3% to $266 million for the quarter.
• Hallador Energy — The Indiana-based energy provider dropped 6.8% after revenue missed analysts’ expectations for the fourth quarter. Hallador posted $94.2 million, under the consensus forecast of $95.5 million from the two analysts polled by FactSet.

— Alex Harring

Futures tied to the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 all sat near flat shortly after 6 p.m. ET. on Monday night.

— Alex Harring