Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and the macro landscape.
Oil is the headline mover today, with U.S. crude jumping above seventy-five dollars a barrel after the Trump administration reinstated a blockade on Iranian vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. The move follows a weekend of traded strikes between Washington and Tehran, with both sides disputing whether the critical waterway remains open to commercial traffic. Energy traders are pricing in meaningful supply disruption risk.
Turning to soft commodities, cotton is posting a sharp early rally Monday, with futures up between one hundred fifteen and one hundred twenty points in early trading. That follows Friday's gains of forty-five to ninety-nine points. The market is effectively shrugging off last week's WASDE production increase, having already digested the larger acreage figures from the NASS report the prior week. December cotton finished last week with a four hundred forty-two point gain.
And on the healthcare and technology front, Mark Cuban is sounding the alarm on artificial intelligence in the U.S. healthcare system, warning it could trigger a costly arms race between hospitals and insurers. Cuban argues that rather than solving systemic problems, AI may simply allow insurers to deny claims more efficiently while providers spend resources fighting back — a cycle he says leaves patients no better off.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
