Market Tumbles After Jobs Report & Nasdaq Wants to Trade Around the Clock

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0:38Probably a guy named Kevin. Then, after a long delay, the jobs report is finally here, and it kind of stinks. It's Wednesday, December 17th. Let's ride.

0:53Let's say you're watching a TV show and you'd want to avoid spoilers. maybe you'll stay off the internet for a bit or avoid talking to friends who are ahead of you. But there's another place you may want to stay away from, Google Earth. Fans of the hit Apple show Pluribus are confronting the fact that Google Earth's historical imagery reveals a major plot point in episode seven if you zoom in on the fake neighborhood outside of Albuquerque that was used for the set. I'm not going to tell you what it is, of course, but Toby, this has got me spooked. I'm still in the middle of Lord of the Rings, and I'm totally going to stop my Google Maps Street View tour of Osgiliath.

1:30What people do with their free time astounds me. How does one even remotely begin to, one, find the set, and then, two, know to go back through old historical satellite imagery to then stumble upon a spoiler? I wonder what other shows, though, you could spoil with some good old historical Google Earth data. Red Wedding, Game of Thrones. And you know what? I'm just going to hold my tongue there because apparently I've spoiled shows on our show before, namely the ending of the summer I turned pretty. So I'd rather you direct your ire towards Google Earth than towards Toby Howell. But now a word from our sponsor, Public.

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3:24That is up from 4.4 % the month prior in the highest level since September 2021, when the country was still emerging from the pandemic. A steady rise in unemployment suggests the labor market is seeing a structural weakening, aka the exact kind of move that the Fed is hyper-attuned to, as it indicates a broader slowdown, not a one-off blip. It remains a lumpy job market out there. Some sectors, like healthcare and hospitality, are still crushing it, while other areas like manufacturing remain anemic. The federal government, for instance, saw a decline of 162 ,000 jobs over the last month as workers affected by Doge officially came off payrolls.

4:03One more vibe-killing stat, wage growth slowed to its lowest level since 2021, which only adds to the pessimism pie consumers have been eating lately. Neil, do not go on a hinge date with a November jobs report. Certainly not, but I do want to present some beige flags or maybe even some green flags because I don't think this report was as bad as maybe you described. And to do that, I want to go where no one has gone before, an extra decimal place. So you said the unemployment rate rose from 4.4 % to 4.6%. That is technically true, but let's go an extra decimal place. It rose from 4.44 % in September to 4.56 % in November.

4:46And due to the vagaries of rounding, you get something that is maybe a little more dramatic than what the 4.4 to 4.6 percent suggest. Then again, you also look at private payrolls. So we talked about the fact that Doge eliminated 162 ,000 government jobs, but let's look at private payrolls. They have risen by an average of$75 ,000 per month for the last three months. So that maybe suggests stronger underlying job creation than the headline number of job losses may suggest. So there's some glass half full statistics that maybe show that this is maybe more of a confusing or muddy job report than the headline numbers suggest.

5:25All right, fine. You had red green flags and base flags. I'm going right back to red flags, though, and that is young people are struggling in this job market. Employment prospects for young workers aged 16 to 24 are grim in November. Their unemployment rate rose to 10.6%, the highest since 2021. So you don't need an extra decimal point there to know that it's not great that people are the youngest people, the people entering the workforce in the beginning of their careers are having struggles doing that. And then also we are just below stability in general right now. The U.S. economy is failing to put enough jobs into the job market to keep up with the supply of new workers.

6:09So we are seeing if you just average out the last three months of jobs growth, we're adding just 22 ,000 jobs. On a six-month basis, job growth is averaging just 16 ,000 jobs per month. That is not a replacement rate. That is not signs of a stable jobs market that is breaking even in terms of new people being added into the workforce, having jobs available for them. Yeah, I mean, when you do the sector break, down here, there's really only one sector that is adding jobs. I mean, this is basically like Joe Burrow on the Bengals. They're the only company or the only sector that is actually doing anything to improve the prospects of the job market, and that is healthcare and social assistance.

6:49So healthcare and social assistance accounted for 116 % of private sector job gains across October and November. And you're thinking, how can something add 116 % of total jobs? So That's because everything else was losing jobs. And one sector I want to highlight there is manufacturing. Manufacturing lost 5 ,000 jobs in November. Manufacturing payrolls haven't risen. They've been all negative since March, and they are now at their lowest level since March 2022. We have certainly not seen a manufacturing renaissance as a result of high tariffs on the rest of the world. I do think the Fed is holding their nerve when looking at this, though, because one thing that they've said is that there's significant data distortions over just the last few months.

7:30The government shutdown made everything a little bit wonky right now. So maybe they won't put as much sway into these big revisions or these big upsides one way or the other because they're saying, listen, we know we're peering through, you know, muddied glasses right now. Let's wait for everything to clear up a little bit before we make any prognostications or react too strongly. Let's give the final word to RSM economist Joe Bruce Suelis, who wrote a report on the job on the jobs report that was released yesterday. and he said, if you are not confused, you are not paying attention. Moving on, the race for the next Fed chair has been shaken up over the last few days with Kevin overtaking Kevin as the most likely new central bank boss.

8:09Yes, both the final contenders to replace Jerome Powell in May are named Kevin. President Trump has signaled that within a few weeks, he's probably going to choose between appointing Kevin Hassett, currently a top economic advisor at the White House, and Kevin Warsh, a former Bush economic advisor and ex-Fed governor. I think you have Kevin and Kevin, Trump said on Friday. I think the two Kevins are great. However, there's growing belief that one Kevin might be a more likely pick than the other, and it's not the Kevin most thought. Hassett, the White House economist, was long viewed as the front runner because of his close relationship with Trump and his advocacy for lower interest rates, which is what Trump has pleaded for.

8:46Since September, Hassett has been the odds-on favorite in prediction markets, with Kevin Warsh in second. But this week, the flippening happened. On Tuesday, Kevin Warsh surged ahead of Hassett as the favorite for the next Fed chair. That came from a one-two punch. Number one, Trump indicated in an interview that Warsh was now at the top of his list. And number two, a CNBC report on Monday revealed that people close to Trump were warning him against choosing Hassett over concerns of a bond market revolt. Then again, I just checked Kalshi this morning and now Hassett is back in the lead. So it really does feel like a toss up at this point.

9:21More importantly, Toby, is America ready for a Fed chair named Kevin? I think the Kevins are in a bit of a lose-lose scenario no matter who wins. Either you, one, kind of bend the knee to the executive branch and deliver the low interest rates that Trump wants, which increases concerns of the Federal Reserve lacking independence, which is what a lot of people are highlighting. Or you don't bend the knee and are subject to a very rocky tenure with Trump after he presumably might turn on you if you don't do exactly what he says. So maybe you don't even want the job if your name is Kevin. You're already behind the eight ball when your name is Kevin.

9:59I'm just kidding. But also, maybe it won't even be one of the Kevins at all. You mentioned another kind of change in the prediction market odds this morning. Later this afternoon, Trump is meeting with Chris Waller, which is a Fed governor he appointed in 2020. Waller is viewed as someone who would defend the institution's independence. So the fact that they're having a meeting later, that has got people saying, actually, maybe it's not the Kevins. We want Waller in here, so maybe he's the dark horse in the Kevin vs. Kevin race. Yeah, a few finance titans have sounded off on who they would want as the Federal Reserve chair.

10:33J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who is really the kingmaker in this space, implied that he would prefer Warsh, which is the more mainstream view outside of Waller, as opposed to Hassett, in a meeting. So he is he wants to backwash and he doesn't like the Hassett pick because Hassett is so close to Trump and would maybe lower interest rates when the market doesn't exactly benefit from that. And then Ken Griffin, who's the CEO of Citadel, didn't say anything one way or another indicating who he would prefer. But he did make it clear that the most important move the president and the incoming Fed chairman can make is to create distance between the White House and the Fed.

11:14And maybe that's, you know, a backhanded knock against Kevin Hassett, who, again, works in the White House. And while he has gone on interviews this past weekend and before that, saying he would protect the Fed's independence is seen as pretty buddy-buddy with Trump. Yeah, Hassett has been on damage control saying like, no, he would have no weight, which is what you're supposed to say if you're a candidate for Fed chair. But the two Kevins and a Chris, it sounds like a messed up sitcom that is coming down the pipeline. With only the global economy. Exactly. Moving on, bust out a Red Bull in the soundtrack from Challengers.

11:48NASDAQ wants you to pull an all-nighter. The second largest U.S. exchange asked the SEC for permission to beef up its trading hours by adding an additional session from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m., bringing the total amount of time you can make ill-fated bets on Beyond Meat to 23 hours. The pros of such an approach include letting your cousin in Brussels day trade during his waking hours as it would invite market participants outside the U.S. to play ball. U.S. stocks dominate global portfolios, so investors in Asia to Europe, who currently react after the fact to big events like earnings or Fed decisions, could capitalize on information more quickly.

12:27Now, the downsides are what you'd expect. Near-continuous trading can lead to some wild swings, especially during times like 3 a.m. when volume and liquidity are low. Still, this is the way the trading world is moving. The New York Stock Exchange received initial approval for 22-hour weekday trading earlier this year, while Robinhood and other brokers both already offer 24-hour trading, albeit executed on less regulated exchanges. Neil, nothing like waking up with night terrors at 3.30 in the morning to see you've lost a quarter of your net worth on a quantum computing stock. From what I understand, this is being very much cheered by traders in Europe and Asia, where they want more accessibility to the U.S.

13:11stock market, which is the biggest in the world. Foreign holdings of U.S. stocks reached a record$17 trillion last year. The U.S. stock market represents almost two-thirds of the market value of all listed companies globally. When we're talking about the NASDAQ, which wants to go 23 hours, it's home to NVIDIA, Apple, and Amazon. So if you're in Hong Kong or in a trader and you have to wake up in the middle of the night to actually trade the most valuable companies in the world, that can be very annoying. So they say, wow, this is a game changer for us to be more in line with the trading hours of the United States where these are all the stocks I want to buy.

13:45And I think one factor that we have to mention that's driving a lot of this is cryptocurrency. Now, Bitcoin has come along over the past decade or so, and you can trade it 24-7. When the markets go quiet after Friday at 4 p.m., Bitcoin is still going crazy and people are making money or losing money on Bitcoin, Ethereum, a bunch of other cryptocurrencies. And that ushered in a new paradigm of 24-7 trading. We're on the Internet anyway. The pandemic has also blurred the lines between working hours and non-working hours. This is just our new reality. So that's what proponents say, why we should move to more 24-7 trading.

14:19And then some detractors pointed out there's a role for pauses in markets. You need pauses to allow people to digest information, to kind of reduce some of the volatility maybe in some of your positions. Companies need to be able to rely on downtime, to release earnings, to conduct these meetings, to not have every single thing that they do move the markets. There are a reason why we have these pauses in the markets. At least that's why some people are proponents of just the normal system that we have right now. And there's been some very strong language coming out of Wall Street. A Wells Fargo trading desk put out a response saying, this is literally the worst thing in the world because it just makes, that is a direct quote from Wells Fargo.

15:02They argue that nonstop trading pushes markets further towards gambling behavior. It encourages more speculative trading, especially at those wee hours in the morning where big swings can happen because bid-ask spreads are wider. There's just less institutional money flowing through things. And I think that is the big question mark. Is this just going to be all retailers trading at crazy hours or are institutions going to provide maybe that stabilizing liquidity force in the markets that make them a little bit more efficient? These are all questions that are still up in the air. I think they're also just annoyed about having to create the infrastructure and you're not just annoyed, but also it's going to cost a lot of money to run something 24 or 23 hours a day.

15:44Like think about if you're a store owner and you're open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., you shut off the lights, you go home and you can go back to your family. But then you're the parent company says, OK, actually, you guys have to stay open 24 seven. That means hiring people overnight. That means keeping the lights on overnight. That means more inventory management overnight. That means building the infrastructure to go from, you know, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to an all-day operation. That's exactly what's happening over at Wall Street. They need this whole infrastructure behind it, which is going to cost tens of billions of dollars.

16:15But I don't know. It looks like the momentum is shifting toward this 24-7 trading. It's maybe a matter of when, not if. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with a story about tipping right after this.

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17:06Buy four cartons, get the fifth free when you use davidprotein.com slash mbd. That's davidprotein.com slash mbd. If you prefer to shop in person, David is now in over 5 ,000 stores nationwide. Check out their store locator to find a location near you. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity. And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3 % daily cash back on my everyday purchases. There are no points to calculate, no limits or deadlines.

17:42Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone. If that sounds like the kind of simplicity you want in a credit card, apply for Apple Card in the wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Brands. Terms and more at applecard.com. Uber and DoorDash are throwing a Christmastime Hail Mary to try and block a new tipping law coming to New York City next year. The food delivery companies sue the Big Apple over a measure that will change the way tipping looks on their apps. The law, coming into effect in January, forces them to prompt customers to tip their delivery person up front instead of after the transaction, and the default tip will be a minimum of 10%.

18:26The companies say this infringes on their First Amendment rights to free speech by requiring them to relay a government-mandated message to their customers. They argue that people are suffering from so much tipping fatigue that they'll stop ordering food delivery due to pre-checkout sticker shock. New York City Council shot back, hey, what goes around comes around. The city enacted the law as a counterattack to Uber and DoorDash moving their tip prompt post-checkout in 2023, seen by critics as a move to suppress worker pay and make them more dependent on the apps for work. But stick with me here.

18:57There's one more layer to this. The move by Uber and DoorDash to move tips to the post-checkout screen was itself a response to New York City introducing a minimum wage for delivery workers in 2023, which raised costs for the companies. So the full timeline is New York mandates a minimum wage for delivery workers. Delivery apps move their tipping prompts to after the order was completed. New York makes them move it back, and Uber and DoorDash sue to stop that from happening. Toby, it is one battle after another between the city and the apps, but it highlights the stakes in what's become a massive food delivery industry.

19:29Yeah, let's go back to 2023 when this minimum pay rate for app-based delivery workers was established in New York City. That prompted the companies to move tipping after checkout because they were saying, hey, we're paying these workers more. We don't want people to open up their apps and see their delivery fees plus a tip and just go, it's not even worth it anymore. So it was in their best interest to move it later in the process. And as a result of that, tips did collapse. So there is massive. Just think about the consumer behavior here. Are you going to tip more if you are presented with it immediately?

20:05Or are you going to tip, go back after your meal and open your app again and tip people? Obviously, it's going to lead to less tips. And a lot of workers have come on and say like, hey, yes, my earnings have gone up because of this minimum pay, but my tipping absolutely collapsed from out from underneath me. So whatever way the, you know, this lawsuit turns out, it does absolutely change how people are getting compensated for, you know, delivering your meals because it does affect the tipping rate. Yeah, delivery workers absolutely got paid more because of the minimum wage. Today, delivery workers, they're guaranteed a little over$21 per hour spent actively delivering.

20:45And DoorDash says they make closer to$30. But you're right. Tipping has gone down precipitously. And as a share of their earnings, customers tipped 64 % less. And tips, while they accounted for 50 % of a delivery worker's income before this minimum wage law, Now they account for just 13 % of their earnings per hour in the second quarter of 2025. So little UX tweaks and minimum wage things can make a really big difference as evidenced by the law in 2023 and all of the wrangling that's come after it. And the city council's position here is that it's just about transparency. Customers deserve that clarity at checkout.

21:22Workers deserve the fair chance to receive a tip for their work. And this is not necessarily a new thing. It would just be returning back to how it always was, which is tips before checkout. I have noticed too. Unfortunately, I order some food on delivery apps from time to time. And I think they are A-B testing a little bit because sometimes I get prompted before. Sometimes I don't get prompted. So there's certainly some experiments going on within these companies right now saying, how does it affect it? Is it actually true that it's going to lead to sticker shock at checkout? Or could we actually put tips back where they originally were?

21:58Toby, you are not the only one who orders food delivery. New Yorkers spent more than$265 million on restaurant deliveries in the first half of 2025. That is up from$183 million during the same period of 2022. So when you're looking for pandemic trends that have stuck around, it's not Peloton. It's food delivery. I was at least like$50 of that. The bad total right there, Neil. On one order. Yeah, on one order. All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Jared Kushner is out. Yesterday, Affinity Partners, the PE firm tied to Jared Kushner, officially exited Paramount's bid for Warner Brothers Discovery.

22:34This comes just days before Warner Brothers is expected to reject Paramount's latest$30 per share all cash offer. One of the board's biggest concerns was whether Paramount's complex funding structure could hold itself together. There was money coming in from Saudi, Qatari, and Abu Dhabi's investment funds. Oracle stock was being pledged as collateral. Banks were involved. It was all held together by tape and chutzpah. Affinity exiting validates those concerns and has totally flipped this bidding war on its head. As of this morning, Netflix is firmly back in the lead to get a deal done, according to prediction markets, with Calci showing a 70 % chance that they will successfully take over Warner Brothers compared to days of Paramount being the odds on favorite.

23:16Wow. So looks like what's going to happen today is Warner Brothers is going to reject Paramount's$30 per share bid, which will send Paramount back to the drawing board and saying, should we come back with a higher offer? The problem is they are worth$15 billion. Netflix, who they're going up against, is worth over$400 billion. The question mark here is the big boy Larry Ellison. He's the father of David Ellison, who controls Paramount. Larry Ellison is one of the richest people in the world. However, there are questions reportedly among Warner Brothers board about whether he is good for all of the money.

23:52The Ellison family is backstopping all$41 billion in equity commitments, and they're just not sure whether he is truly committed. I mean, or he a lot of his wealth. He's one of the richest persons in the world. A lot of his wealth is tied up in Oracle stock. Oracle stock has dropped about 45 percent from their September high. he's still extremely rich and can afford this but i think there is a huge larry ellison question mark and now the ball is in paramount's court to see whether they'll come back with a better offer facing intense pressure to cut costs volkswagen is doing something it hasn't done in its 88 year history closing a plant in germany the final car rolled off the assembly line at vw's factory in dresden yesterday a red id3 gtx when it was signed by workers and will go on display for visitor tours.