Kim Kahn

One battle after another took home six awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Sinners, which led the field with 16 nominations, won four, including Best Actor and Original Screenplay.

The only question now, when does an AI-generated film win an Oscar?

Or does AI just start picking the winners?

And in the Wall Street Research Corner, Bank of America is out with its list of stocks that hedge funds love to short.

Moderna tops the list with 18.3% of its floats sold short.

Next up, Brown Forman, Supermicrocomputer, Charter Communications, and Fox.

You can see all 20 names on the list in our story on Seeking Alpha.

The link's at the top of show notes.

Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon.

Today is Wednesday, March 11th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn.

Our top story so far.

Inflation holds steady, for now.

The February CPI showed modest monthly increases in both the headline and the core, matching expectations.

Annual CPI held at 2.4%, and core CPI stayed at 2.5%.

But the numbers don't yet reflect the shock from the U.S.-Israel Iran war, which pushed crude above $100 a barrel from about $65 before the action,

Oil is currently around 87%.

Economist Joseph Bresuelis of RSM sees the CPI top line rising to 3% year-over-year in March and 3.5% or more in April.

That will not provide much comfort to an American central bank now focused like a laser beam on short- and medium-term inflation expectations and on notice for any bleeding of top-line inflation into the core, he said.