December 4, 2025 Live Trading Room Market Recap & Trades - (Samantha and AI Briefing notes)
Macro In A Nutshell
Economic Data Releases Of Note: Private ADP data Wednesday (bearish/believable) and Public/Federal Jobless Claims this morning (bullish/unbelievable) are the last employment data Fed will receive before FOMC next Wednesday. Again, BLS report for OCT will never be published but the NOV NFP report comes out December 16th. Also, we do get September’s PCE print tomorrow/Friday at 10 a.m. If it’s a little hot, market could price out Fed rate cut expectations. Otherwise, this is the last inflation read before the Fed’s December 10 decision because OCT CPI will never be published. Heavy sigh.
Labor Weakness: “No Hire, No Fire” is half right. ‘No Fire’ part cracked months ago:
ADP small firms crashed - biggest breakdown since Covid [see charts]
ADP private payrolls went negative - on a 3M rolling average, after >200K were added same time last year
Challenger layoff surge - “Job cuts surpassed 1 million, the highest October total since 2003”
WARN notices spiking - Cleveland Fed said Oct was one of the worst months of the last 20yrs; impending layoffs are next
Continuing Claims - lowest in 3 yrs can mean folks who lost jobs are staying unemployed long after benefits run
100K+ Govt employee purge - effective Sept 30th
Consumer Health: From the Dollar Tree earnings call:
“All consumers are seeking value
“We had 3 million more households shop with us in Q3 this year compared to Q3 last year. Approximately 60% of these incremental shoppers came from higher income households, those earning over $100,000, 30% for middle income households, those earning between $60,000 to $100,000, with the rest from lower income households, those earning under $60,000. Importantly, Q3 spending growth was broad based across all income sub-cohorts, including households earnings below $20,000.”
Micro In A Nutshell:
META, SNOW, IONQ, ORCL, RLKB, ASTS, AAPL, DLTR, DG, CRM, SYM, XHB, SLV, VXN, VIX
META - that was fun!! Nov 28th: “META bounced off its 100W at 581 (prior short target) and is still en route to 655-662 target/rejection.” This morning live premarket I said the news that caused META to spike 6% to 687 (well above my 662 target) was way overdone and those long calls could lock in those profits by selling short the shares because I believed strongly that it would come back down to $662. Yup, that worked!!