🧠 US layoffs soar past 1.1M in 2025, highest level since the pandemic

🏛️ Financial News

• Personal Consumption 💸 CNBC: Core inflation rate watched by Fed hit 2.8%, delayed September data shows, lower than expected

• US Tariffs 🗽 CNBC: Delayed tariff impact starting to hit, could cause companies to reduce head count in 2026

• Jobs : Layoffs 🚪 CNBC: Layoff announcements this year top 1.1M, the most since 2020 when pandemic hit, Challenger says

•  Jobs : Claims 🏪 Yahoo! Finance: Jobless claims drop to 3-year low, but employers shed 71,000 jobs in worst November since 2022 

• Jobs : Private Payroll 🏪 Yahoo! Finance: ADP: private payrolls dropped 32,000 positions last month in slowing job market, by most since 2023

• Consumer : Sentiment 🛍 Reuters via Yahoo! Finance: Record shoppers, online sales surge signal strong US holiday season momentum 

• Housing 🏘️ CNBC: Apartment rents drop further, with vacancies at record high

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📊 Global Markets

• S&P 500 $VOO ( ▲ 0.19% )🌍 CNBC: S&P 500 closes higher, notching four-day win streak and nearing record after light inflation reading 

  • Sherwood by Robinhood: Wall Street has great expectations for the next year in the stock market

• Technology : Nasdaq $QQQ ( ▲ 0.41% ) 🌐 VettaFi: Invesco falls just short of votes needed to flip QQQ into an ETF 

• Small Caps : Russell 2000 $VTWO ( ▼ 0.43% ) 🏪 TheStreet via Yahoo! Finance: Russell 2000 jumps nearly 2% as disappointing jobs report renews rate cut bets

• Europe Markets $STOXX ( 0.0% ) 🏰 CNBC: European markets often soar in December, but what’s behind the rally?

• China Markets $MCHI ( ▲ 1.1% ) 🐉 CNBC: ‘China’s Nvidia’ Moore Threads surges over 400% on trading debut after $1.1B listing

• India Markets $NSEINDIA.P ( 0.0% ) 🕌 CNBC: India cuts rates to 5.25% as expected as central bank flags ‘weakness in some key economic indicators’

• Silver Market $SLV ( ▲ 2.3% ) 🥈 CNBC: Silver Extends Record-Breaking Rally on Tight Global Supplies Silver surge outpaces gold on global squeeze, rising interest rate-cut hopes

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🚀 Stocks

• Consumer : Sentiment 🛍 Yahoo! Finance: Dollar stores are winning. That's a warning for the economy

• Retail : Discounter $DG ( ▲ 5.65% ) 💲 RetailDive: Dollar General sales jump as Americans hunt for value

• Retail : Discounter $DLTR ( ▲ 5.67% ) 🌳 Yahoo! Finance: Dollar Tree Q3 earnings beat shows distressed consumers

• Media : Streamer $NFLX ( ▼ 2.89% )▶️ Variety: Netflix to buy Warner Bros. film and streaming assets in $72B deal

  • Variety: Paramount Skydance alleges Warner Bros. Discovery sales process ‘has been tainted by management conflicts’ that favor Netflix bid

• Retail :Apparel $AEO ( ▼ 4.51% ) 👖 CNBC: American Eagle stock jumps 10% as it expects a big holiday, raises forecast after Sydney Sweeney ads

• Consumer : Beauty $ULTA ( ▲ 12.65% ) 💄 CNBC: Ulta shares pop as beauty retailer hikes sales and earnings outlook for second straight quarter

• Retailer : Dept Store $M ( ▲ 2.38% )🛍 Yahoo! Finance: Macy’s stock rises as Q3 earnings beat estimates, outlook raised 

• FinTech : Banks $SOFI ( ▼ 6.15% ) 💱 Sherwood by Robinhood: SoFi Technologies slides on $1.5B share sale announcement at $27.50 a share

• Airlines $BA✈️ CNBC: Boeing stock jumps 10% as CFO says company expects higher 737, 787 deliveries next year

  • CNBC: FTC orders Boeing to divest parts of Spirit AeroSystems in planned merger

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🌐 Technology

• Technology Sentiment 🌐 Sherwood by Robinhood: Technology giants don’t look like they used to, as the asset-light era fades

• Technology $MSFT ( ▲ 0.48% ) 👩‍💻 ArsTechnica: Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas

  • CNBC: Microsoft will raise prices of commercial Office subscriptions in July

  • CNBC: Microsoft is in talks to shift its custom chip business to Broadcom from Marvell, The Information reports

• Communications $META ( ▲ 1.8% ) 👥 Bloomberg via Yahoo! Finance: Meta plans 30% cut to Metaverse budget as reality becomes less virtual

•  CNBC: Meta signs commercial AI data agreements with publishers to offer real-time news on Meta AI

• Technology $AAPL ( ▼ 0.68% ) 🍎 TechCrunch: Apple taps Meta lawyer as General Counsel in latest shake-up

• Software : ERP $CRM ( ▲ 5.3% ) 💼 CNBC: Salesforce beats on earnings, issues better-than-expected revenue forecast

• Chipmakers : ASICs $MRVL ( ▲ 0.73% )⚙️CNBC: Marvell to acquire Celestial AI for as much as $5.5B

• Hardware : Memory $MU ( ▲ 4.66% ) 🧠 Tom’s Hardware: Micron announces exit from consumer business to focus on AI demand

• B2B Hardware $HPE ( ▲ 1.88% )🗄️ CNBC: HPE sees weaker quarterly revenue on AI server sales delay

•  Productivity $DOCU ( ▼ 7.64% )✍️ Bezinga: DocuSign stock slides as Q3 earnings beat fails to impress

• Security $CRWD ( ▼ 0.21% )🛡️ CNBC: CrowdStrike Q3 earnings beat estimates, revenues increase Y/Y

• Security $RBRK ( ▲ 22.49% )🛡️ CNBC: Rubrik stock rips 22% higher after blowing out earnings and boosting guidance

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🤖 Artificial Intelligence

• Worker Sentiment 💼 Forbes: MIT report: AI can already replace nearly 12% of the U.S. workforce

  • CNBC: HP announces plans to lay off up to 6,000 employees by 2028, as AI becomes central to its operations

• Frontier LLMs : OpenAI ֎ CNBC: OpenAI CEO declares “code red” as Gemini gains 200 million users in 3 months

  • TechBuzz: ChatGPT growth stalls as Gemini surges 30% in user battle

• Frontier LLMs : Anthropic 🤖 TechCrunch: Anthropic hires law firm to prepare for possible IPO in 2026

• LLM Wrapper : Perplexity 🌯 CNBC: The New York Times sues Perplexity, alleging copyright infringement

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Hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday season! We’ll be back the following Saturday morning to recap the week’s financial news.

Thanks to Empower for sponsoring. ← This is honestly a great tool I personally use through my work’s 401k provider.

✨ Happy Unprompting,

Rawee
[email protected]

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