Good morning and welcome to Markets Desk.
Corn is under pressure to start the week, with futures posting losses of four to seven cents as post-USDA report weakness carries over from Friday. Cash corn nationally is sitting at four dollars and twenty-eight and a half cents, down seven cents on the session. Export inspections came in soft, with shipments tallying just over six hundred seventy-two thousand metric tons for the week, doing little to support the bulls.
Shifting to metals, gold is drawing serious capital into West Africa, where mining companies have poured billions into new operations to capitalize on near-record prices for the metal. The region is emerging as one of the most active frontiers in global gold extraction, with majors and junior miners alike racing to stake their positions in what analysts are calling a generational build-out cycle.
And in digital assets, Visa and fintech firm Mesh have announced a partnership that would allow users to spend crypto and stablecoins directly across Visa's network of one hundred seventy-five million merchant locations worldwide. No separate card required — Mesh connects the wallet, Visa handles the rails. It marks one of the most concrete steps yet toward mainstream crypto spending infrastructure at genuine global scale.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
