Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
Equities took a meaningful hit Thursday as rising crude prices reignited inflation concerns across the board. The S&P five hundred shed nearly nine-tenths of a percent, the Dow fell over one percent, and the Nasdaq one hundred slid nearly three-quarters of a point, with investors broadly repricing the risk that stubborn energy costs could complicate the Fed's path forward.
Shifting to soft commodities, cocoa futures climbed to two-week highs on both the New York and London exchanges after fresh concern emerged over the size of Ghana's upcoming harvest. Ghana is the world's second-largest cocoa producer, and any signal of supply tightening tends to move prices quickly given how thin global cocoa inventories have been running in recent seasons.
Meanwhile, Super Micro Computer offered investors some clarity after a turbulent five months. An independent board investigation found no evidence that current senior management had knowledge of an alleged scheme to smuggle two and a half billion dollars in Nvidia-chip hardware to China. A criminal trial involving a company cofounder is still set for next year, so this story is far from fully closed.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
