US equity markets rallied despite mildly hotter-than-expected inflation figures - Dow rose +236-points or +0.61%. International Business Machines (IBM) Corp rose +3.16% following reports that it had notified employees in its marketing and communications division that it’s making cuts, becoming the latest large technology company to trim its payroll. Last year, IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said the company was “massively upskilling all of our employees on AI [artificial intelligence]” as it replaces nearly 8,000 jobs with AI. 3M Co (up +4.97%), Microsoft Corp (+2.66%), Amazon.com Inc (1.99%) and Walmart Inc (+1.24%) also traded strongly.