Good morning and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
Australian equities are pushing higher in mid-session trade, with the S&P ASX two hundred climbing well above the eight thousand six hundred fifty level. The session is recovering Thursday's losses, drawing momentum from a broadly positive overnight session on Wall Street, reflecting improving risk appetite heading into the weekend.
Shifting to commodities, cotton futures closed Thursday with gains of forty-six to ninety-nine points across most contracts, supported by a weaker US dollar index which fell nearly twenty cents to just under ninety-nine dollars. Reports of a potential US-Iran agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz also weighed on crude, adding a layer of macro complexity to the commodity picture.
And in a story that raises real questions about AI deployment at scale, Starbucks has quietly retired its NomadGo-powered inventory management system after just nine months in operation. The tool reportedly hallucinated stock levels and slowed barista workflows, prompting the company to revert to a single standardized counting model. It's a cautionary signal for enterprises racing to operationalize AI without sufficient testing in real-world conditions.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
