NEWS
Mega-Caps Make Their Move

Amazon and Meta are making new all-time highs, while Tesla is approaching its own 2021 peak after a monster tear. The market remains mixed at the index level, but certain pockets of tech continue to absolutely crush it. Overall, it was another positive week for risk-takers who will likely spend the weekend counting their gains. 👀

Today's issue covers cracks in today’s labor market report, the S&P 500’s quarterly rebalancing, and the Nasdaq granting SMCI more time to file. 📰

Here’s the S&P 500 heatmap. 3 of 11 sectors closed green, with consumer discretionary (+2.11%) leading and energy (-1.70%) lagging.

And here are the closing prices: 

Most bullish/bearish symbols on Stocktwits at the close: 📈 $CXAI, $ALBT, $GWRE, $BIOA, $LIFW 📉 $OSK, $RBLX, $REI, $PR, $SWBI*

*If you’re a business and want to access this data via our API, email us.

ECONOMY
Jobs Market Rebounds But Cracks Widen 🧐 

The U.S. jobs market bounced back in November, with 227,000 nonfarm jobs added. That was higher than the 200,000 consensus estimate, and October and September numbers were also revised higher. 📊 

The unemployment rate did tick up to 4.2%, primarily due to a drop in the labor force participation rate.

Some analysts say November’s job growth was not as strong as the headline number suggests, given that many of the job gains were from workers returning from strikes. Others suggest that growth remains concentrated in a few sectors, with healthcare, government, and leisure and hospitality driving much of this year’s gains. 🤔 

One chart that warrants further investigation is the YoY change in employment level falling into negative territory for the first time since 2010 (excluding Covid). Interestingly, the types of declines we’ve seen recently are indicative of a recession, but maybe this time truly is different. 🧐 

Nonetheless, what’s clear is that the labor market’s deceleration (not crash) continues, but it still remains strong enough to warrant wage growth above inflation’s rate. Average hourly earnings rose 0.4% MoM and 4% YoY, both 0.1% above expectations.

Odds of a Fed rate cut in the bond market jumped from 70% yesterday to 85% now…making it all but a lock ahead of the Fed’s final meeting of 2024 in two weeks.