Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving money and markets.
Travelers Companies delivered a standout session today, with shares surging well ahead of the broader market after the insurance giant posted what analysts are calling a very impressive leap in profitability. Investors rewarded the results swiftly, making Travelers one of the day's clearest winners on the Street.
Shifting to commodities, the agricultural complex is telling two different stories to close the week. Wheat rallied hard into the Friday close, with Chicago soft red winter contracts finishing as much as nine and a half cents higher on the day and September futures up forty-two and a half cents on the week. Cotton, meanwhile, continued to slide, with most contracts losing eleven to forty points at midday as crude oil and the dollar both pushed higher.
And on the trade front, the Trump administration is leaning on a new legal mechanism to impose twenty-five percent tariffs on Brazil and potentially other nations, after the Supreme Court forced the administration to reimburse much of what it had already collected under its earlier tariff structure. The workaround takes effect later this month and signals Washington is far from finished pressing its trade agenda through alternative legal channels.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
