U.S. stocks were trading mostly lower Tuesday afternoon, with a focus on inflation that’s been hard to tame reigniting concerns on Wall Street about the potential need for more restrictive monetary policies than earlier anticipated. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA was down 181 points, or 0.6%, near 32,709, while the S&P 500 index SPX was off 0.1% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP was 0.3% higher, according to FactSet data. Recent earnings reports from big-box retailers Target Corp TGT and Walmart Inc WMT have reinforced concerns that strong wage growth, particularly for lower wage workers, in recent years will make inflation hard to contain, even through the Federal Reserve already has rapidly increased short-term rates in the past year. The yield on the 2-year Treasury BX:TMUBMUSD02Y was spotted at 4.8% on Tuesday, near its highest since 2007.
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