Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
In the soft commodities complex, cocoa futures are clawing back from early weakness, with New York December contracts up nearly half a percent after bouncing off a two-month low. The catalyst is supply anxiety out of Ghana, where emerging risks prompted short covering from traders unwilling to stay exposed heading into the session.
Shifting to equities, Apollo Global Management is drawing attention not for its price action but for its yield. Shares dipped low enough Thursday to push the annualized dividend of two dollars and twenty-five cents above the two percent threshold, crossing a level that tends to attract income-focused institutional flows and signals meaningful valuation compression from recent highs.
And in the grains pits, corn is extending its slide into the start of October, with most contracts off four to five cents on the session. The national cash price is sitting at four dollars fifty-six and three quarters, and this morning's export sales data came in at five hundred thirty-five thousand metric tons for the two thousand twenty-six to twenty-seven marketing year, landing at the low end of expectations and giving bears fresh ammunition.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
