Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
Crude oil is holding modest gains as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, with September West Texas Intermediate climbing to a one-week high, up roughly a quarter of a percent. Without a reopening agreement between Iran and Oman, supply disruption fears are keeping a floor under prices, even as gasoline futures slip over one percent.
Turning to the grain complex, wheat is under notable pressure across all three exchanges, with Chicago soft red winter and Kansas City hard red winter contracts both off nine to ten cents at midday. Soybeans are also falling nine to eleven cents, weighed down by wetter weather forecasts improving crop conditions. Corn is holding fractionally lower, with the national cash price sitting just above four dollars.
On the venture side, Kevin Weil, who recently departed as chief product officer at OpenAI, is reportedly seeking a valuation of at least seven hundred fifty million dollars for a new artificial intelligence science startup. That figure, before a product has been publicly announced, reflects just how aggressively the market continues to price AI talent and ambition coming out of frontier labs.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
