Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money and markets.
Gold and silver are sliding to two-month lows this Tuesday, and the pressure is coming from two directions at once. Renewed Iran tensions have paradoxically pushed safe-haven demand lower as traders rotate out of metals, while rising fears of an interest rate hike are strengthening the dollar and squeezing precious metal prices across the board.
Feeding into that rate anxiety is fresh inflation data out of China, where wholesale prices just hit a near four-year high. The driver is the ongoing Middle East conflict, which has disrupted energy and raw material flows and sent global commodity costs surging. Consumer prices, meanwhile, came in below expectations, painting a complicated picture for Beijing's policymakers.
On the agricultural side, soybeans closed weaker Tuesday with the pressure concentrated in the meal complex, where futures dropped as much as two dollars and seventy cents on the session. Soy oil was mixed, and the national average cash bean price barely budged, edging up just a quarter cent to ten dollars and fifty-eight cents. Demand signals remain muted.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
