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Market indexes were mixed today, with the blue-chip Dow retreating to sub-49K one day after setting a new closing high above it. The Dow shed -466 points today, -0.94%. The S&P 500 was down a less-drastic -0.34%, while the Nasdaq actually gained +0.16% for the session. The small-cap Russell 2000 slid -7 points, -0.30%.

Alphabet (GOOGL - Free Report) became the second-largest company in the world by market cap today, thanks to a note from a BNP Paribas analyst citing Google’s position to perhaps be the top AI platform in the world. This sent shares up nicely this morning, after having hovered in the same range for the past two trading weeks. Alphabet surpassed Apple (AAPL - Free Report) for the number-two spot, and still trails NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) by several hundred billion dollars.

JOLTS Numbers Drop in November
 

Earlier today, the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for November came out, and results were far below estimates. A total of 7.15 million job openings was well beneath the 7.6 million expected, and the lowest since the September 2025 outlier 7.1 million. This brings the average down to the low 7-millions over the past year and a half.

Accommodations and Food Services shed the most job openings for the month, -148K, followed by Transportation/Warehousing/Utilities at -108K. Construction was the only notable positive for job openings, +90K. Most jobs were pulled in the South, -100K, then -91K in the Midwest, -78K in the West and -34K in the Northeast. 

Relatedly, Job Quits, from the same survey data, rose to +2% from an upwardly revised +1.9% in October. This metric has fallen off the table in recent months, suggesting a tight labor market where employees are not keen on venturing forth to new firms in their careers. As we saw in ADP (ADP) data this morning, those changing jobs are no longer expected to see a large bump in pay.

Other Econ Reports Out Today
 

ISM Services for December followed ISM Manufacturing, which was reported earlier in the week. In this case, a nice increase to 54.4% from estimates of 52.2% was welcome news. Manufacturing data was weaker than expected at 47.9%, so we see how economic fortunes are widening between goods and services.

Factory Orders for October — delayed because of the government shutdown — disappointed: -1.3% was worse than the -1.2% anticipated and the +0.2% posted in the prior month. Again, we’re seeing more evidence that goods-producing still has a steep hill to climb.

What to Expect from the Stock Market Tomorrow
 

Jobs Week continues with Weekly Jobless Claims ahead of Thursday’s opening bell. Expectations are for the Initial Claims tally to be back over 200K for last week. We’ll also see U.S. Trade Deficit numbers and U.S. Productivity for Q3 out tomorrow, and U.S. Consumer Credit as of the closing bell. 

Friday brings us the U.S. Employment Report for December, where expectations are for a pretty decent month of domestic labor, overall: 73K jobs are expected to have been filled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with an Unemployment Rate ticking down 10 basis points (bps) to 4.5%. Hourly Wages are anticipated to creep higher, but only 10 bps to +3.6%.

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