NEW YORK: Wall Street stocks mostly rose early Monday following mixed inflation data as markets look ahead to earnings season and a government report on the labor market.

The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation reading, the personal consumption expenditures price index, rose at an annual rate of 2.5 percent in February, up 0.1 percentage points from a month earlier, in line with analyst expectations.

The report was released Friday when markets were closed. This week’s calendar includes the closely-watched March jobs report, which will come at the end of the week.

About 15 minutes into trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.3 percent at 39,687.60.

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The broad-based S&P 500 added 0.2 percent at 5,262.66, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 0.6 percent to 16,484.87.

Both the Dow and S&P 500 ended Thursday’s session at records.

Among individual companies, AT&T fell 1.7 percent after disclosing that some 7.6 million current customers – and 65.4 million former account holders – recently had their data released on the dark web. The telecom giant said on its website the data in question was from 2019 or earlier.

FedEx dropped 1.5 percent after disclosing that its contract with the US Postal Service (USPS) will expire on September 29 after the parties were unable to come to an agreement to renew.

FedEx competitor UPS, which announced a “significant partnership expansion” with USPS, fell 0.7 percent.