NEW YORK — Wall Street drifted through a muted day of trading Tuesday, with stocks and bonds making modest moves ahead of reports later in the week with the potential to move markets.

The S&P 500 had its smallest one-day move in more than a year, slipping 0.17 point, or less than 0.1%, to 4,108.94. Most of the stocks in the index rose, as did the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which gained 98.27, or 0.3%, to 33,684.79. The Nasdaq composite slipped 52.48, or 0.4%, to 12,031.88.

In the bond market the 10-year Treasury yield, which helps set rates for mortgages and other important loans, held firm at 3.42%. The two-year yield ticked up to to 4.02% from 4.01% late Monday.

The biggest immediate question for Wall Street has been whether the Federal Reserve will keep hiking interest rates in its attempt to get high inflation under control. It’s already raised rates at a furious pace over the last year, enough to slow some areas of the economy and for strains to appear in the banking system.

That’s why markets geared up for Wednesday’s report on inflation. Economists expect it to show inflation slowed to 5.2% in March from 6% in February. That would mean continued progress since inflation peaked last summer, but it would also still be well above the Fed’s 2% target.

A reading that’s higher than expected likely would bolster traders’ expectations that the Fed will raise rates by another quarter of a percentage point at its next meeting in May. Higher rates can undercut inflation but also raise the risk of a recession and hurt prices for stocks and other investments.

Still-high inflation is one of the reasons analysts expect this upcoming earnings reporting season to show the worst drop since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. A bunch of banks will help kick off the earnings reporting season when they tell investors on Friday how much they earned during the first three months of the year.

Investors say they’re also hungry to hear what CEOs say about current and upcoming conditions. One fear is that banks in particular could pull back on their lending following all the turmoil in their sector, caused in part by the past year’s swift leap in interest rates. That could further slow the economy and raise the risk of a recession.

In markets abroad, stocks rose modestly across much of Europe. In Asia, stocks jumped 1.4% in Seoul after the Bank of Korea left its policy interest rate unchanged for a second straight meeting. It’s one of many regional central banks now slowing or reversing rate increases due to signs of weakness in the economy.