Good evening, this is Markets Desk with your closing brief.
The Justice Department has expanded its beef price investigation to eight major retailers, including Walmart and Amazon, as ground beef hits record highs driven by drought affecting seventy-five percent of domestic livestock, a seventy-five-year low in cattle herds, and tariffs on Brazilian imports. With midterms approaching, this probe carries real political weight.
Turning to pharma, the question of whether AbbVie or Pfizer represents the stronger healthcare position heading into two thousand twenty-six is sharpening for portfolio managers. AbbVie has navigated the loss of exclusivity on its top drug by pivoting aggressively to new immunology franchises, while Pfizer continues working through its post-pandemic revenue reset.
And in geopolitics with market implications, Argentine President Javier Milei is threatening sanctions against Falkland Islands oil developers, citing what he calls Donald Trump's openness to revisiting Washington's long-standing neutral stance on sovereignty. Any disruption to offshore development in that corridor would move energy markets and complicate British upstream exposure.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
