EndGame Macro
RT @DiMartinoBooth: Massachusetts employers cut 11,100 jobs in September, the biggest monthly loss since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, according to federal data released Monday by the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
@BostonGlobe
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RT @DiMartinoBooth: Massachusetts employers cut 11,100 jobs in September, the biggest monthly loss since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, according to federal data released Monday by the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development.
@BostonGlobe
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EndGame Macro
This Is How Labor Cycles Turn…Quietly at First
This chart is basically a sanity check on the labor market. It blends a lot of different signals like claims, JOLTS layoffs, WARN notices, Challenger cuts, even how often companies mention layoffs on earnings calls and shows whether things are running hotter or cooler than normal.
For most of the past couple of years, everything sat well below zero. That was the labor hoarding phase with companies hanging onto workers because hiring had been too hard. Now that thick blue line is climbing back toward neutral, and it’s doing it quickly. That shift matters. It’s the kind of move you see when the ground under the labor market starts to soften, even if the headline unemployment rate hasn’t caught up yet.
Why This Turn Feels Different
What jumps out is the broadness of the pickup. Layoff mentions on earnings calls are rising. WARN notices are rising. Job cut announcements are rising. Claims haven’t fully budged yet, but they tend to move last. The early indicators are all leaning the same way.
And when you step back and look at the rest of what’s happening with higher delinquencies in credit cards and autos, CRE stress building, bankruptcies at a 15 year high, and more than a million job cuts already announced this year it starts to look less like random noise and more like a pattern. Higher rates work with a lag, and we’re in the part of the cycle where the lag finally starts to show up in labor.
My Read on What’s Coming
This looks like the beginning of a turn…slow, uneven, but pointed in one direction. Companies stop hoarding, they start trimming, and eventually that shows up in the unemployment rate.
If this line crosses above zero and stays there, it’s usually the moment when the conversation shifts from resilient labor market to labor market is cooling. We’re not there yet…but the path upward is the part you pay attention to. It’s often the first signal that the rest of the macro data is about to follow.
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This Is How Labor Cycles Turn…Quietly at First
This chart is basically a sanity check on the labor market. It blends a lot of different signals like claims, JOLTS layoffs, WARN notices, Challenger cuts, even how often companies mention layoffs on earnings calls and shows whether things are running hotter or cooler than normal.
For most of the past couple of years, everything sat well below zero. That was the labor hoarding phase with companies hanging onto workers because hiring had been too hard. Now that thick blue line is climbing back toward neutral, and it’s doing it quickly. That shift matters. It’s the kind of move you see when the ground under the labor market starts to soften, even if the headline unemployment rate hasn’t caught up yet.
Why This Turn Feels Different
What jumps out is the broadness of the pickup. Layoff mentions on earnings calls are rising. WARN notices are rising. Job cut announcements are rising. Claims haven’t fully budged yet, but they tend to move last. The early indicators are all leaning the same way.
And when you step back and look at the rest of what’s happening with higher delinquencies in credit cards and autos, CRE stress building, bankruptcies at a 15 year high, and more than a million job cuts already announced this year it starts to look less like random noise and more like a pattern. Higher rates work with a lag, and we’re in the part of the cycle where the lag finally starts to show up in labor.
My Read on What’s Coming
This looks like the beginning of a turn…slow, uneven, but pointed in one direction. Companies stop hoarding, they start trimming, and eventually that shows up in the unemployment rate.
If this line crosses above zero and stays there, it’s usually the moment when the conversation shifts from resilient labor market to labor market is cooling. We’re not there yet…but the path upward is the part you pay attention to. It’s often the first signal that the rest of the macro data is about to follow.
GS: Recent Alternative Data Also Point to a New Risk of Rising Layoffs https://t.co/aKKd3n3rju tweet
AkhenOsiris
$AMZN
Amazon’s self-driving robotaxi subsidiary, Zoox, expects to start charging passengers for rides in Las Vegas in early 2026, with paid rides in the San Francisco Bay Area coming later next year, a company executive said Monday.
The move, which would represent a key milestone for Zoox as it seeks to catch up with Alphabet’s Waymo, depends on obtaining federal regulatory and state approvals, Zoox Co-founder and chief technology officer Jesse Levinson told the audience at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI event in San Francisco on Monday.
And while robotaxi rival Waymo recently partnered with DoorDash to test food deliveries with driverless cars, Levinson said that Zoox is “laser focused” on moving people around cities, an addressable market he sees as being “just profoundly huge.” That directive has come “all the way from the very top” at Amazon, he added, despite the retailer’s significant interest in driverless package delivery.
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$AMZN
Amazon’s self-driving robotaxi subsidiary, Zoox, expects to start charging passengers for rides in Las Vegas in early 2026, with paid rides in the San Francisco Bay Area coming later next year, a company executive said Monday.
The move, which would represent a key milestone for Zoox as it seeks to catch up with Alphabet’s Waymo, depends on obtaining federal regulatory and state approvals, Zoox Co-founder and chief technology officer Jesse Levinson told the audience at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI event in San Francisco on Monday.
And while robotaxi rival Waymo recently partnered with DoorDash to test food deliveries with driverless cars, Levinson said that Zoox is “laser focused” on moving people around cities, an addressable market he sees as being “just profoundly huge.” That directive has come “all the way from the very top” at Amazon, he added, despite the retailer’s significant interest in driverless package delivery.
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EndGame Macro
Why Europe Will Never Dump Treasuries And What Would Happen If They Tried
These headlines always land like a shock, but when you look at how Europe’s financial system works, the idea falls apart almost immediately. Treasuries aren’t just an investment for Europe, they’re the backbone of how European banks survive stress. They’re dollar collateral, dollar liquidity, and the easiest way to tap dollar markets when things get shaky. That’s not something you toss overboard to make a political point.
And the recent reporting makes that even clearer. The ECB isn’t gearing up to punish the U.S., it’s quietly bracing for the possibility that the Fed’s dollar swap lines could get tangled up in politics. That fear changes the whole conversation. When the thing you rely on most might get pulled back, you don’t start selling the only asset that gives you access to it. You do the opposite…you build buffers, run stress tests, and look for backup plans.
What Would Happen If They Tried
If Europe ever dumped Treasuries in size, they’d feel the blow long before the U.S. would. Funding stress tends to hit European banks first, and losing Treasuries would make that pressure even worse. The euro would whip around, credit conditions would tighten, and the very dollar shortage they worry about would show up instantly. And at the end of the day, the Fed would still step in to stabilize the Treasury market, leaving Europe with the damage and the U.S. with the backstop.
So the “nuclear option” makes for a loud headline, but it’s not a real strategy. Europe’s entire system is built on access to dollars, and Treasuries are the key to that access. Selling them would only weaken Europe’s position and highlight the one thing they already know…for now, the global dollar plumbing still runs through the United States.
If anything, the recent reporting shows the opposite of the headline. Europe isn’t preparing to walk away from Treasuries, it’s preparing for a world where it might need them more than ever.
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Why Europe Will Never Dump Treasuries And What Would Happen If They Tried
These headlines always land like a shock, but when you look at how Europe’s financial system works, the idea falls apart almost immediately. Treasuries aren’t just an investment for Europe, they’re the backbone of how European banks survive stress. They’re dollar collateral, dollar liquidity, and the easiest way to tap dollar markets when things get shaky. That’s not something you toss overboard to make a political point.
And the recent reporting makes that even clearer. The ECB isn’t gearing up to punish the U.S., it’s quietly bracing for the possibility that the Fed’s dollar swap lines could get tangled up in politics. That fear changes the whole conversation. When the thing you rely on most might get pulled back, you don’t start selling the only asset that gives you access to it. You do the opposite…you build buffers, run stress tests, and look for backup plans.
What Would Happen If They Tried
If Europe ever dumped Treasuries in size, they’d feel the blow long before the U.S. would. Funding stress tends to hit European banks first, and losing Treasuries would make that pressure even worse. The euro would whip around, credit conditions would tighten, and the very dollar shortage they worry about would show up instantly. And at the end of the day, the Fed would still step in to stabilize the Treasury market, leaving Europe with the damage and the U.S. with the backstop.
So the “nuclear option” makes for a loud headline, but it’s not a real strategy. Europe’s entire system is built on access to dollars, and Treasuries are the key to that access. Selling them would only weaken Europe’s position and highlight the one thing they already know…for now, the global dollar plumbing still runs through the United States.
If anything, the recent reporting shows the opposite of the headline. Europe isn’t preparing to walk away from Treasuries, it’s preparing for a world where it might need them more than ever.
EUROPEAN OFFICIALS EYE ‘NUCLEAR OPTION’ OF DUMPING U.S. TREASURIES IF TRUMP CUTS UKRAINE DEAL WITHOUT ALLIES — WSJ tweet
AkhenOsiris
OpenAI $GOOGL $MSFT $NVDA $AMZN
Behind Altman’s “code red” declaration, however, are tensions between camps inside the company that have been festering for years, according to people familiar with the matter.
A group including Fidji Simo, a former Meta Platforms executive who leads OpenAI’s product efforts, and Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, have pushed the company to pour more resources into ChatGPT. Simo has also told staff that OpenAI needs to do a better job of making sure its users discover the value of ChatGPT’s existing features before the company goes on to build new ones, and also wants to improve the chatbot’s speed and reliability.
Researchers meanwhile have prioritized state of the art technology that could lead to artificial general intelligence, or AGI, but don’t do as much to improve the basic chatbot experience.
OpenAI is set to release a new model, called 5.2, this week that executives hope will give it new momentum, particularly among coding and business customers. They overruled some employees who asked to push back the model’s release so the company could have more time to make it better, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company also plans to release another model in January with better images, improved speed and a better personality, and to end the code red after that, Altman said.
An OpenAI spokeswoman says there’s no conflict between the two philosophies, and that broad adoption of AI tools is how the company plans to distribute AGI’s benefit.
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OpenAI $GOOGL $MSFT $NVDA $AMZN
Behind Altman’s “code red” declaration, however, are tensions between camps inside the company that have been festering for years, according to people familiar with the matter.
A group including Fidji Simo, a former Meta Platforms executive who leads OpenAI’s product efforts, and Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, have pushed the company to pour more resources into ChatGPT. Simo has also told staff that OpenAI needs to do a better job of making sure its users discover the value of ChatGPT’s existing features before the company goes on to build new ones, and also wants to improve the chatbot’s speed and reliability.
Researchers meanwhile have prioritized state of the art technology that could lead to artificial general intelligence, or AGI, but don’t do as much to improve the basic chatbot experience.
OpenAI is set to release a new model, called 5.2, this week that executives hope will give it new momentum, particularly among coding and business customers. They overruled some employees who asked to push back the model’s release so the company could have more time to make it better, according to people familiar with the matter.
The company also plans to release another model in January with better images, improved speed and a better personality, and to end the code red after that, Altman said.
An OpenAI spokeswoman says there’s no conflict between the two philosophies, and that broad adoption of AI tools is how the company plans to distribute AGI’s benefit.
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My family: You spend a lot of time studying Crypto you must be making a lot of money.
Me living paycheck to paycheck: https://t.co/ub7xsfpeq4
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My family: You spend a lot of time studying Crypto you must be making a lot of money.
Me living paycheck to paycheck: https://t.co/ub7xsfpeq4
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