Good news doesn’t always have to be bad news for the market

This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open from Global Markets. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Did you see it? You can register over here.

An explosion of jobs in December
US non-farm payrolls It added 256,000 in December., 212,000 in November and above the Dow Jones consensus forecast of 155,000; US Bureau of Labor Statistics He reported on Friday. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2% in November. Economists had expected the rate to be the same in December.

For 2025 US markets in the red
US markets fell on Friday after the release of a disappointing jobs report for December. The major US indices are now in the red for 2025. Pan-European Stoxx 600 The index lost 0.84%, all major bourses closed in negative territory. Eurozone government bond yields rose to fresh multi-month highs.

Why did Meta need to ‘kneel to Trump’?
Metas The announcement on Tuesday that it would drop third-party fact-checking was seen as an attempt to appease US President-elect Donald Trump. This is why Meta had to “bend the knee to Trump,” in the words of a former Facebook vice president. Separately, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed on Friday “The Joe Rogan Experience”. He slapped Apple For lack of creative efforts.

Apple has lost market share in China.
Apple Shares slipped 2.4% after analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. He wrote On Friday, the company’s iPhone shipments in China fell 10%-12% in December from a year ago, compared with flat smartphone shipments overall. Additionally, Kuo said, there is “no evidence” that Apple Intelligence is monetizing hardware upgrades or services.

TikTok may be banned in the US this week.
The United States Supreme Court on Friday heard oral arguments in a case involving TikTok’s future in the United States. The judges were generally unconvinced by TikTok’s main argument that banning TikTok would violate the free speech rights of millions of its users in the US, meaning the app could be removed from the App Store this week.

(PRO) Weekly inflation report and bank earnings
The US consumer price index for December is out on Wednesday. It suggests inflation will continue to weigh on the economy and markets, especially after December’s non-farm payrolls rose sharply. Like big banks JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs And Morgan Stanley Report earnings in the second half of the week.

December job gains were 100,000 higher than expected by Dow Jones Consensus estimates.

Investors are concerned that the Fed may remain hawkish in response to the tepid labor market. Chances of a single cut this year depend on the market. After the work report, it increased to 68.5% CME Group’s FedWatch gauge.

Already higher bond yields have jumped further in recent weeks when the jobs report comes out. of 10-year Treasury yield It has reached its highest level since November 2023.

After the release of the job report, the market sell-off was quick and unexpected. of S&P 500 Slide 1.54%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average It decreased by 1.63 percent Nasdaq Composite 1.63% off. All major indices are now in negative territory for 2025.

Good news is bad news for investors, as the hackneyed phrase goes.

But we must remember that conditions are different from those during inflation.

The US Federal Reserve may not be worried about a strong labor market at this point. On the contrary, strong job growth is likely to be reassuring, given that employment concerns were one of the reasons the Fed decided to cut its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points in September.

“You’ll never hear me complain that we got 250,000 jobs,” Chicago Federation President Austin Golsby said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” Goolsby also noted that inflation has been around 1.9% over the past six months, or below the Fed’s target.

At a time of low inflation, strong employment numbers are a sign of strong economic growth.

And economic growth ultimately means “better earnings potential, less downside risk, and that really leads to longer-term returns and a selloff in today’s market,” said Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial.

In other words, good news can be good news if investors look beyond the present.

— CNBC’s Jeff Cox, Michael Santoli, Piya Singh and Sean Conlon contributed to this report.