Wall Street stocks ended slightly lower on Wednesday following a choppy session as investors looked ahead to a critical inflation report.

A day ahead of Thursday's much-anticipated consumer price index (CPI) report for September, markets digested data showing wholesale inflation rose 0.4 percent last month – more than expected.

Still, markets largely shrugged off the wholesale price data on Wednesday, an indication that investors are no longer shocked by elevated inflation and are now expecting more tough actions from the Federal Reserve to contain it.

At the most recent Fed meeting, central bankers said they were determined to bring down "unacceptably high" inflation, according to minutes released on Wednesday.

"The market knows that inflation is not coming down quickly enough," said Briefing.com analyst Patrick O'Hare.

A bad CPI report on Thursday would be a "reminder that the Fed still is playing catch up," said O'Hare, adding that it would probably take a really shocking figure to provoke a big reaction.

The Dow slipped 0.1 percent to 29,210.

The S&P 500 shed 0.3 percent to 3,577, its sixth straight decline, while the Nasdaq dipped 0.1 percent to 10,417.

Among individual companies, PepsiCo shot up more than four percent as it raised its full-year profit and revenue forecast following strong third-quarter results in a sign of the continued robustness of consumer demand.

The release was one of the first during third-quarter earnings season, which gets going in earnest later this week with reports from Delta Air Lines and JPMorgan Chase.

Moderna rose 8.3 percent as it announced it was working with Merck on "development and commercialisation" of a cancer vaccine. (AFP)