Wall Street falls as US inflation slows but remains hot

Stocks closed lower on Wall Street after a report showed inflation is slowing, though not by as much as hoped. The S&P 500 fell 0.7% Friday, marking its first losing week in the last three. The weakness came after the U.S. government reported that prices at the wholesale level were 7.4% higher in November than a year earlier. That’s a slowdown from October but worse than economists expected. High inflation, along with the Federal Reserve’s economy-crunching response to it, have been the main reasons for the stock market’s painful tumble this year. Treasury yields rose.