Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Equities are firmly in the green today as the S&P five hundred climbs more than one percent, the Dow adds one and a half, and the Nasdaq one hundred surges more than two percent. Strong tech earnings are doing the heavy lifting, with semiconductor names leading the charge, while optimism around US-Iran diplomatic progress is giving risk appetite an additional tailwind across the board.
Shifting to soft commodities, cocoa is pulling back after a stunning fifteen percent run over just three sessions. New York September futures are off about a third of a percent, with London contracts down nearly one percent. The move is purely technical — when an asset runs that hard that fast, overbought signals tend to bring in sellers regardless of the underlying story.
Meanwhile coffee is moving in the opposite direction, with arabica futures up nearly one percent and robusta gaining more than one and a half. The catalyst is an unexpected rain forecast for Minas Gerais, Brazil's largest arabica-growing region. Counterintuitively, the prospect of rain is actually raising harvest concerns there, triggering short covering and pushing prices higher.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
