Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money and markets.
Equities are drifting in mixed territory this afternoon as rising bond yields keep buyers cautious. The S&P five hundred is fractionally lower, the Dow off by about four tenths of a percent, while the Nasdaq one hundred is clinging to a slim gain. Yields are doing the heavy lifting here, pulling capital toward fixed income and leaving stocks in a holding pattern.
Shifting to the commodity space, diesel prices are approaching six dollars a gallon across nearly all fifty states, with Texas and Oklahoma the last holdouts. Analysts are blunt about the consequence — grocery costs are moving higher in real time, as transportation expenses work their way through the entire supply chain. This is a consumer inflation story that doesn't need a Fed meeting to feel immediate.
And in a note that will raise eyebrows among the value investing faithful, MarketWatch is out with an argument that Berkshire Hathaway has failed to outperform the S&P five hundred over roughly the past thirty years. With Warren Buffett stepping back, some analysts suggest the conglomerate's best days as a market-beater may belong to history, and that capital could be better deployed elsewhere.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
