LONDON, Dec 13 Reuters Global stocks held steady on Tuesday, while the dollar eased modestly ahead of U.S. inflation data that could persuade the Federal Reserve and other central banks to step back from aggressive interest rate hikes.

Headline consumer price pressures for November in the world39;s largest economy are expected to have fallen for a fifth successive month, which in theory would take some pressure off the Fed to raise rates for an extended period of time something investors have been banking on for months now.

The MSCI AllWorld index was up 0.12 in early European trade. It39;s on course for its first monthly decline since September, having lost 1.2 so far, but is still on track for a 12.6 gain this quarter, its strongest quarterly performance since the final three months of 2020.

However, core inflation, which strips out food and energy prices two key drivers of the rise in price pressures over the last year has steadily risen in this time.

The core consumer price index is expected to have risen by 6.1 in November from October39;s 6.3, while headline inflation is forecast to have fallen to 7.3 from 7.7.

At the moment, market sentiment has really been built on the idea that U.S. inflation is heading lower, so I think that if that doesn39;t happen … if we saw that even flatline, there is a significant risk here that it undermines what weve been seeing in terms of the market move towards the upside and the gains weve seen over Q4 so far, IG…