Welcome to the today’s Afternoon Brief- Four hours into the U.S. session equities continue fall on data showing contracting manufacturing activity in the Chicago area, Chicago’s PMI came in at 49.7.

Afternoon Brief  -  Market Indexs

DJIA  -0.33% lower by -44.93 points to 13441.04 The S&P 500 index SPX  -0.36% down by -5.15 points to 1442.00. The NASDAQ Composite COMP is down by -0.36% or -11.35 points to 3125.24 (12:17 p.m. ET)

In Dow 26 out of the 30 stocks are trading in the red.  McDonald’s Corp. (MCD, quote) taking the biggest hit thus far in this final session of the quarter as Janney Montgomery Scott LLC lowered their view on   McDonalds.

Shares of Nike Inc. (NKE, quote) are falling after the sports retailer said future orders did not live up to The Street’s exception due to lower demand out of China.

One upbeat and surprise came from Research in Motion (RIMM, quote) beat down almost left for dead stock is higher by more than 10% on a surprise of better than expected sales of its BlackBerry Smart phones.  RIMM as was able to strengthen its cash base but some analysts are suggesting RIMM will blow through cash rapidly on the suggestion that RIMM margins are actually negative in some cases.

Corn futures jumped to the maximum allowed price after a U.S. Department of Agriculture report showed corn supplies far below expectations.

December Corn contracts moved higher by 40 cents at $7.56 a bushel, hitting the limit set by the CME Group Inc.

For a more comprehensive look into the grain markets check out the Grain Report

Those readers that are equity traders only can gain access to the Corn Futures markets through Teucrium Corn Fund (CORN, quote) ETF that seeks to replicate, net of expenses, the daily changes in percentage terms of a weighted average of the closing settlement prices for three futures contracts for corn that are traded on the CBOT, specifically (1) the second-to-expire CBOT corn futures contract, weighted 35%, (2) the third-to-expire CBOT corn futures contract, weighted 30%, and (3) the CBOT corn futures contract expiring in the December following the expiration month of the third-to-expire contract, weighted 35%.