Wall Street Today | Bond Traders Now Lean Toward Quarter-Point Fed Hike in February

The consumer-price index climbed 7.1% in November from a year ago, down sharply from 7.7% in October. Excluding food and energy, the consumer price index rose 0.2% in November and was up 6% from a year earlier, according to a Labor Department report Tuesday. Economists see the gauge — known as the core CPI — as a better indicator of underlying inflation than the headline measure.
>>Read more

Shares of the mega $85.5 billion $Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF(BND.US)$ climbed 0.7% Tuesday, helping to put the world's biggest bond ETF on pace for a roughly 3.3% quarterly gain, according to FactSet data.
>>Read more

$Tesla(TSLA.US)$ shares have been in a freefall over the past few months, sinking nearly 40% since the end of September. The stock closed down 4.09% at $160.95 in New York, recouping some of the losses from earlier in the session. The shares fell as much as 6.5% on Tuesday, briefly taking its market capitalization below $500 billion.

$Apple(AAPL.US)$ is reportedly preparing to open iOS to competing app stores. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company's software and services teams are redesigning the platform to "open up key elements." That effort is likely to end in Apple giving iPhone and iPad users the option to download third-party apps without going through the App Store.

$Moderna(MRNA.US)$gapped up 20% on Tuesday after announcing that its $Merck & Co(MRK.US)$ partnered cancer vaccine met the primary efficacy endpoint.
>>Read more

$Microsoft(MSFT.US)$ said that antitrust regulators shrugged off its offer to make Call of Duty available to gaming rivals — including $Sony(SONY.US)$ — as part of its $69 billion purchase of $Activision Blizzard(ATVI.US)$ .