Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and why.
The biggest institutional story of the day is the swearing in of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chairman, confirmed unanimously by the Federal Open Market Committee. Warsh inherits a central bank caught between slowing growth and sticky inflation, leaving him with far less room to cut rates than markets had hoped — a disruptor constrained by circumstance from day one.
Shifting to private markets, a MarketWatch analysis is sounding alarms for investors in private equity funds, warning that the same overleveraged, underperforming companies rattling the private credit space are sitting inside those equity vehicles too. With valuations still marked generously and exit routes narrowing, the exposure may be deeper than limited partners realize.
And in commodities, cocoa futures on ICE New York closed higher Friday, up nearly one percent, as short covering picked up ahead of the long holiday weekend. Separately, robusta coffee surged more than one and a half percent on concerns over dry conditions in Vietnam, which supplies a significant share of the world's robusta crop, while arabica slipped modestly, leaving the coffee market decidedly split.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
