By Eric Wallerstein, Akane Otani and Joe Wallace U.S. stocks climbed Thursday after the latest inflation data showed cooling price pressures for the sixth consecutive month, likely keeping the Federal Reserve on track to slow its pace of interest-rate increases. $S&P 500 index(.SPX.US)$ added 0.3%, while $Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US)$ gained 0.6%, or roughly 216 points. The technology-heavy $Nasdaq Composite Index(.IXIC.US)$ rose 0.6%. The indexes bobbed between small gains and losses for much of the morning before gaining steam midday. Consumer-price inflation slowed to 6.5% in December, down from 7.1% in November, the Labor Department said. Despite landing largely in line with economists' expectations, one measure of services inflation -- excluding energy services and the co

November's better-than-expected U.S. job gains brought a touch more anxiety to financial markets on Friday, as investors reacted to the possibility that interest rates may need to go up even more next year than previously thought. Traders boosted the likelihood that the fed-funds rate will get to 5% or higher by March to as high as 43% at one point, up from roughly 31% on Thursday. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Michael Feroli saw an increased chance that the Fed's median rate forecast for 2023 will go slightly above 5%. And at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., analysts said that even 7% -- an upper-bound estimate cited last month by St. Louis Fed President James Bullard -- may be understating how much higher borrowing costs could go. The U.S.'s 263,000 new job gains for last month, which exceeded e

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