Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
LinkedIn is cutting jobs across multiple divisions, with CEO Daniel Shapero confirming layoffs hitting the Global Business Organization, marketing, engineering, and product teams. The internal memo signals a deliberate pullback in spending, framing the cuts as scaling back investments rather than a crisis response. It's a familiar posture from a tech sector still rationalizing its pandemic-era hiring surge.
Shifting to the commodity pits, live cattle futures took a meaningful hit Tuesday, with front-month contracts shedding one dollar seventy to two dollars eighty across the board. Open interest declined by two thousand two hundred sixty-eight contracts, pointing to longs unwinding positions rather than fresh short selling. Cash trade has been subdued, with bids circling two hundred sixty dollars, and the market is watching Wednesday closely for any directional signal.
On the softs side, lean hog futures also closed mostly lower, dropping seventy-five cents to one dollar eighty across most contracts, though May managed a modest five-cent gain. The USDA pegged the national base hog price at ninety-five dollars and nineteen cents Tuesday afternoon, while the CME Lean Hog Index slipped thirty-eight cents. Traders are positioning cautiously ahead of fresh data.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
