Stock Market Today: Dow Sinks 1,276 Points After Alarming CPI Report Stocks were crushed Tuesday as the latest inflation update showed consumer prices remained elevated in August – dashing hopes that price pressures had peaked. Looking at the numbers, the Labor Department this morning said its consumer price index (CPI), which tracks what consumers are paying for goods and services, was up 8.3% year-over-year in August. While this was down from the annual increases seen in both June ( 9.1%) and July ( 8.5%), the core CPI, which excludes more volatile energy and food prices, was up 6.3% from the year-ago period – more than the 5.9% jump seen in each of the two prior months. And month-over-month, core CPI accelerated 0.6%, much quicker than July''s 0.3%. SEE MORE 16 Dividend Kings for Decades of Dividend Growth "Like the payroll report a couple of weeks ago, today''s CPI report showed that this year''s trends of persistent inflation and an excessively tight labor market are taking longer to move towards the Fed''s targeted levels than originally expected," says Rick Rieder, BlackRock''s chief investment officer of global fixed income.