Transcription
Today's number, guys, is pretty bad. 862,000. The jobs revisions to the downside that we now know happened during 2025. But with the new jobs number coming out, should we be starting to pay attention to that, or is really something much sicker underneath the hood? Today we talk about why this chart has so much impact into the markets moving forward into 2026. And of course, what's going on with silver, gold, oil, and many other commodities. It looks like there's a tale of two markets, and we need to talk about it. Stocks, commodities, and cryptos. What's going on? Let's take a look right now together. See you soon everybody.
Well, welcome back everybody to the Daily Show. My name's Thomas Atinson and in today's video we're taking a look at the macro, what Wall Street's been up to and of course the key flows that are defining the markets right now. But let's kick things off with the big discussion point because of course we need to talk about layoffs as the jobs numbers have just come out and on the surface they look good until you look at the revisions of the previous year. According to Challenger, the latest data states that January was actually one of the worst years and the highest start to any year of layoffs since 2009. Meanwhile, we just got the revisions for the previous year and yeah, they're not pretty. 862,000. Kevin Gordon here over on X sharing the data which kind of you know is really is very similar to 2024 in terms of revisions but even worse now starting to get very close to what we saw in the global financial crisis.
Now why is all of this important? Well, payroll's numbers have been declining for months now, and you can see the general trend since the peaks have continuously shown that the US economy may not be so hot when it comes to finding jobs. And more importantly, that we're not in a market similar to 2021 anymore. Annual jobs added or lost was almost negative for the previous year with only 181,000 jobs added overall. And of course, this just shows the revision number and how much impact it had into each month's jobs report. On top of all of that, we've also got federal employment, of course, dropping off a cliff now, lower than any year, pretty much all the way back to the 1970s. And it just shows that again, it could be that there are more people looking for these jobs. And I'm sure you guys in the US and of course in many countries around the world are starting to realize that yes, it is getting harder to get replacement jobs. I think we're sitting at about a .8 ratio at this point. That is .8 new jobs for every person looking and generally we sit around .7 to .8. So anything worse than that and you're starting to talk about a recession or of course a significant decline in markets.
Monthly job creation in the US you guys can see here the numbers just came in and supposedly they were pretty good. 130,000. Now this is a number that is much higher than what we've seen during 2025. Now why could that be? Some people sometimes say that around the January period to February, you can get strong numbers, but realistically, I think the time will be told in the revisions more than anything else. And this is the problem with these numbers right now. As we're getting these numbers, as they're coming through, it seems like we're having to pay more and more attention actually to lead indicators. And we've got one coming up later on today's show that probably will help us to really define whether the jobs numbers are good or bad from at least the money flow. And remember, what Wall Street is doing is more important than what they're saying. Hiring has fallen sharply as we've seen AI start to take bottom jobs out of the markets. And you can guys can see here that there is this huge movement now in what's going on with the overall employment. You can see hiring is just continuously declining kind of signaling that there are some concerns from big companies about maybe the future of the markets.
So what's really going on right now when it comes to the overall expenditure in the US? Well, there's a tale of two stories. On the one hand, AI is causing further spend from the biggest Magnificent 7 style businesses. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, everybody seems to want a data center. But on the other hand, we're starting to see weakness in the smaller cap businesses. And this is not a new phenomenon. Basically, less spend is coming through in the small businesses. And you may notice that this is a similar trend to what we saw before the global financial crisis. That was that according to Renmack here at X over on X, no capex boom for small firms. Small business capital spending intentions continue to slide according to the NFIB. The net percent of firms planning capital outlays fell to 18 in January, which is the lowest since April of 2025. And obviously, it's in that kind of declining trend.
Now, all of this kind of spells a problem in the future. And you may know if you've been watching the channel for a long time, we are very, very cautious on the idea of how the market structure looks post a rate cut. In fact, since September, we've obviously seen some pretty big movements in terms of what's going on in the markets. And in particular, we are looking at a rate cut that is now being driven by small caps breadth, of course, more businesses coming through. Now, why is that important? Well, usually you want big ones to lead. When big ones lead, similar to 2024 in a rate cut, things look good. When the small caps start leading, and that happens for too long, it can tell us late cycle. And this comes back to this chart here from Subu Trade, which is the S&P 500 component correlation. Stocks are not all correlated anymore. So we have got a breadth improvement which on the surface looks good and of course allows us to take advantage of the new opportunities which we have been on the channel and obviously talking about them but at the same time we need to be aware that that's not necessarily early stage market. A lot of people celebrate it but remember it's what the context is and the context is post a rate cut and of course we know how that often plays longer term into the future. We're not talking like the next 2 months, 3 months guys. We're generally talking about 12 months from the cut. So, we'll talk about it then. And this will be a big reason why you want to follow this channel in 2026 as well. We'll be discussing this more. I just don't think enough people are talking about it.
Let's now talk, uh, to the point here. Daily chart book says rotation is the word of the year so far. I think it was also the word of the year for the last 3 months at the end of last year. But take a look here, guys. Value versus growth. We're seeing value coming up. Obviously, that's the first time we've seen that since pretty much 2022 when we went into a declining market. We've got small large. We've already discussed that many times. We've got emerging markets coming through. We've got cyclicals of course now, uh, kind of weakening to defensive. This is the type of thing that you often see when you've got a market that is turning later cycle. So, it's going to be one of those big things we continue to watch.
Another story is the AI story, particularly here for software. Now, you can see that the PE ratios have come back down. Now, this is the forward PE ratios, uh, courtesy of Cameron Dawson over on X and Daily Chartbook. And you can see here that we have a very interesting PE ratio. And I'm a bit of a fan of looking at the charts for everything really, including PE ratios. You can see we're actually coming back down to, I guess you would say, a fairer price. Uh, actually a price similar to where we were at the bottom of 2022's falls. Uh, but at the same time, have we found a bid? Well, we'll talk about the stats in a moment for that, but certainly something we're watching. Software companies coming under a lot of pressure in recent times. So, have we seen small cap rotation? Yes, we continue to see this. The small caps, the Russell is now beating the NASDAQ pretty handily. This is the first time it's happened for a little while. Last time we got it was again late cycle, kind of after that 2020 massive expansion to 21 and then of course we saw what happened in 22. Software short interest is also now at record highs. So basically everyone is trying to buy and everyone is trying to short software businesses and that's causing what usually you would see as a build up of structure. Now if you're familiar with your software stocks almost all of them are kind of around support or demand zones. So we might see them sit for a little while as options get burnt. And of course if you know anything about options all of it is about time and time is the key.
Prime book US single stocks positive value increased shorting. You guys can see here that we have a huge amount of overall shorts coming in. This is courtesy of the macro charts over on X. And you can see here short selling across single stocks. I actually retweeted this one FX evolution if you want to watch us over on, um, X as well. And the biggest on record going back to 2016. So this is a pretty big deal because basically it shows here that, uh, we have of course a huge movement into, uh, short selling and I think that what that does, it kind of underpins a kind of like a bottom for markets. Why is everyone trying to short? Well, people are starting to get concerned about markets but as I often say when everyone's trying to short it often doesn't fall. It's when people least expect it and maybe we're not quite at that point.
Now, I did post this one here which is the Mags, Magnificent 7 kind of Mags Roundhill ETF and I thought it was interesting because look at those trades guys. These are all dark pool and normal large trades. And of course from volume leaders and you can see here so much distribution occurred on the Magnificent 7 stocks. And that's a huge deal because of course when you see this much distribution you've got to start to ask yourself the question is who's dumping it? Is it all being dumped by Wall Street? It's not new. It all happened coinciding with as you guessed it September. When we have a look at the S&P you can see those short sellers, those hedges coming through. Total put call ratio obviously increased, Accubu Trade here and of course Bitcoin also may have potentially found a little bit of structural base where everyone went negative, uh, just the other day everyone started buying puts. Take a look at the put volume on on ETFs here for IBIT and IGV obviously has a mixture of puts and calls on it which could create structure base and of course we've talked about defensives. Defensives have been rallying a lot as everyone tries to turn negative on them.
So is it all bad? Well, at for the time being anyway, AI seems to be kind of making the global growth or at least in terms of the GDP for the US and often the world as well cuz governments are spending at the moment. We're seeing an increase. Now, that's not what you usually get in a recession. You're not usually getting a GDP growth, are you? Of course, a recession often is considered as two, of course, quarters negative growth, but in a row. But the thing about it all is that eventually the music might stop. And of course, that's what the market will be looking for. Do we want to know it about in the news? No, guys. We want to see it in the flows. So, we're going to be looking for breakouts and and more importantly, paying a lot of attention to those.
As you guys can see here, Duality Research came out with this ARC code. I actually tended to agree with it. Basically, my thought was that ARC had fallen through. It was pretty easy to see head and shoulders. It's not to say that there's not necessarily some negativity in the hyperscalers, which are all coming out with earnings this week, but then we rallied back up a little bit here, and that kind of showed us that maybe the downward pressure wasn't as significant. And this is an important factor when you're doing technicals on charts. So, it's something we'll be watching. Speaking of hyperscalers, a lot of big funds guys are seemingly wanting to get out. IPOs are on the rise and they're being fast tracked. We've got, of course, Open AI, Anthropic, and also SpaceX this year. So, watch global IPOs, watch IPOs in general. That's going to be a very important point.
When it comes to emerging markets, credit spreads, you guys can see here that we've got a significant, uh, kind of decline here in terms of risk. It's like the calm before the storm. So, for now, we're not seeing risks in the bonds, but we will mention that if it does happen. And we have plenty of big earnings this week. Just be warned, though, the earnings for the markets often are very volatile. The options market sometimes with these hyper growths is upwards of 10 to 15% moves in the session. So just be warned that is what can happen on stocks. They turn into cryptos during earnings sometimes guys.
All right let's now have a look at the S&P then we'll go options market then we'll go the leads and of course talk about the general markets as a whole. The advanced decline line continues up for the S&P. What's that telling us? Breadth is increasing. What is this telling us? We've got resistance at 7K. That will come as no surprise to any viewer here. We know 7K is a massive options level. Here are the updated options, high lows. And you guys can see here the consolidation through the middle of them all. And of course, uh, you can see here that we have lots of puts on 6900 and lots of calls on 7,000. So we go through 7,000, we're probably going positive gamma. We go through 6,900, we're starting to put pressure on to the downside. I think the main level you really want to be watching though is 6,800 on the S&P because we are now firmly in a channel. And you've got to remember the current trend has been up. So generally markets are bullish but for now they're trapped. And what's happening is it's all underneath the hood. It's all in rotation. It's something we talk about in our private community as well. Everything is about rotation, rotation, rotation.
Let's now move over to Tesla. You guys can see here that we have a pretty considerable, uh, movement up in terms of what's going on in terms of options. A lot of people getting involved in the option side. These 900 options. I never quite understand those, but they've been there for a while. We'll see how they go. Uh, but for now, Tesla's slowly trundling back up to try to reclaim that 450, 460 plus, which could send it to 500. It's really just 400, 430. They're the kind of key levels and we're right at 430. So, tough to tell on Tesla at this stage. Nvidia putting pressure on the 190, 195. That's a very important level. We break through that could be really significant for markets to break $7,000 on the S&P as well. and IBIT. Not really too much information here on the Bitcoin markets. You can see it's all over the place. Like we've got puts at multiple different levels, but clearly 40 is a big level for the calls and that's going to be a zone that I think bulls will be looking at. So 40 on IBIT will need to be watched.
When it comes to silver, uh, it's really probably more about that 75 or 80 zone. So really at this stage, SLV, that's kind of the call zone. But let's have a look at the charts for these because I think the charts tell the real story there. The options, some of it got murky after what we saw the other day, which was a huge, of course, leverage explosion.
Now, let's move over to XLY, XLP. Now, I call this the American consumer. And remember before we looked at the jobs numbers, and you might say, "Oh, the jobs numbers are mixed." I would say just like we used to call them and we call them now. It's like fake market, uh, jobs numbers because the thing is it's always in the revisions and 862,000 the year before, whatever it was, 600, 700,000, you know, these numbers haven't been significant for a long time but what is significant is the flow movement and it's not the same market we were in. The consumer, the American consumer is weakening. That can put pressure on everything and I'd love to see your comments down below. Have any of you seen this on the surface? Are you feeling it yourself? You know, this is very important information because realistically, the flow is starting to turn more negative for one-third of the US economy, which is the American consumer. This eventually packs into of course risk and then we see it into bonds. We're watching it. It's like a canary. It's not a sign to, you know, jump out and run away yet but we will be, of course, looking at things such as bond spreads like here. If they start to move out, then we need to be paying attention. Yields themselves seem to be kind of sitting pretty firm. You can see the two years put a lot of pressure on the bottom and we've got our new Fed check of course coming in this year and you can kind of see here that, uh, if it's going to start to see a lot of cuts, then we're going to break through that 3.4 level but for now, it's kind of still just holding, holding, holding for the last couple of months.
UK oil, US oil, we're seeing increases there guys. Well done, of course. Totally different to what other people are looking at. We've been discussing the idea of oil now for months. Three months to be exact. Maybe even four for oil services. And energy stocks are flying. Look at these things. Unstoppable. Unstopp. I mean, they're absolutely mad. And this is of course often against the press. So, it's really important to note that volume's improved. Obviously, we broke to multi-year highs. And I'm not saying that going off into the sun and wow, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. Of course, it's not. But it just does go to show flow is so important to look at and for now, in anyway, it seems like flow is there. Of course, it's not a solicitation to do anything. Please make sure to practice your own risks etc.
Dollar index is falling a little bit but, uh, the monthly kind of is still holding that massive trend line and you can see here it's not looking exactly pretty but we'll continue to watch which side of the dollar it moves on to. Gold's holding better than silver, which makes some sense, but I think after that massive crunch, it's going to sit for a little while and create structure. Nothing much on that. And silver did manage to break through 81, which kind of signals even if it pulls back a little bit, it might want to press on to 90. So, we'll see whether that can happen. A lot of people are looking at silver, but remember, when everyone's looking at it, it's probably the easy money's probably over. So, I know it's interesting. I know we want to cover it, but you'll often find on this channel, we off we we go off and move to the thing that no one wants to talk about. That's just the way it is, guys. That's the way it is in markets.
Let's move over to Tesla. As you guys can see here, it's rallied back up. This is, of course, the volume profile level. So, you'll kind of see, you know, a lot of taps into this zone. No wonder we hit the 436 and we find a little bit of a rejection. So, this is a key level clearly. Obviously 450, 460 is going to get way more bulls in the market from the option side and Tesla remains holding for now but, uh, it, it is, it's kind of unclear in some ways. IGV software tech you guys can see here to stop a freight train down often does take some structure so we're looking there but volume is up massively so there's a lot of interested parties, both sellers and buyers clearly here in software tech and Nvidia no break at 195 yet but if that happens that could be really strong for a 7K plus breakout in the stock market.
Chinese stocks holding their own into Chinese New Year which I believe is this Sunday so, uh, there you go. We're still doing okay there in Chinese stocks. They're moving up still and RK slightly down on what has been, uh, an interesting pattern. This of course is still a head and shoulders. I mean, it really needs to break a 85 to get really bullish but it is one that we're watching. We're also looking at regional banks which continue to be okay. So the thing is if regional banks were getting crushed, that would tell us something about debt. We're not currently seeing that. So again, markets remain resilient even in the face of a ton of press. NASDAQ. Yep, it's in range. So, basically, nothing much is going on. And you can see here, uh, we have Bitcoin, uh, which is breaking to the downside at this stage. And clearly, we're kind of like stuck. Um, so we're not really seeing anything in particular. And you can see here, uh, that we're not at a 618 fib or that little bit of demand here. And we're not, of course, rallying that much. It does take a little bit of time to usually break a structure. The good news is though that those options amounts, so many people went bearish that that often does, um, cause the markets to kind of pause for a little while.
Guys, to summarize today, what are we seeing? Well, continuation of opportunity in different movements. You know, one of the things that I've been looking at recently, telecommunications, if you can believe it. Yes, the mobile phone carriers. That is really late cycle stuff usually, but that has been, you know, some impressive stuff that we've been talking about in our private community over at fxevolution.com, the Market Masters Club. Why? Well, of course, it basically has just shown it in the flow and the flow is the key. So, to summarize here, flow is the key, not really our opinions or bias. We obviously see a tale of two stories in the jobs numbers, but I think really the real story is probably in the revisions and more importantly in the actual flows of things like the American consumer. Are we seeing a weakness? It's not as good as it was last year, that's for sure. But it's not diabolical, at least according to the bonds just yet. And it's only when they care. Remember, markets can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent. It's something that I've always thought about and I've kept it in the back of my mind. Thanks so much for watching, guys. Sub. And of course, if you enjoyed today's video, give it a thumbs up as well. And I'll see you in the next one.