Tech cheers fade, labor data stirs the pot – Market Breakdown #136
Earnings gave a spark, but jobs and yield pressure threaten to refuel doubt.
📊 THE MARKET BREAKDOWN
Daily market intelligence for traders who think in systems, not headlines.
Issue #136 – November 20, 2025
🔥 Headlines & Hysteria (powered by Forked Feed)
US job growth crushes expectations in September, unemployment pops to 4.4%
Forked Feed says: The jobs report landed like a kettlebell on the market’s foot. Payrolls surged past expectations, which sounds great until you remember the market wanted “soft but not too soft, hot but not too hot, and ideally cooked by a fairy.” Unemployment rising to 4.4% gave traders a brief moment of joy because it sounded dovish, then the strong payroll number kicked that fantasy straight into the trash. The result: nobody knows what story to tell, so everyone is pacing around like they lost their keys in the macro data.Wall Street indexes reverse sharply, tech leads the fall despite NVDA’s victory lap
Forked Feed says: NVDA delivered monster earnings last night and the market still woke up cranky. The morning pop vanished faster than a day trader’s discipline. Tech stocks took the brunt of the mood swing, as if the entire sector was being punished for succeeding too loudly. Every strategist went on TV saying something different, which confirms the truth: nobody has the slightest idea what the current regime is. Not bullish. Not bearish. Pure market feral.Morgan Stanley scraps its call for a December rate cut after today’s jobs beat
Forked Feed says: The second those job numbers hit, Morgan Stanley ripped up its December rate-cut forecast like it owed them money. This is how fast the narrative turns in 2025. One morning the market is chanting “cuts soon, cuts soon,” and by afternoon the research departments are setting the chants on fire. Traders who spent the last two weeks building their soft-landing fairytale now have to explain why their portfolios look like a grocery store rotisserie chicken.Gold sinks as the strong jobs number nukes December cut hopes and boosts the dollar
Forked Feed says: Gold got body-checked into the curb today. When the jobs print screamed “the economy is not dying,” the dollar flexed, yields perked up, and gold folded like a lawn chair. Everyone who ran to metals for protection is now staring at their trading screens like they accidentally bought tickets to the wrong movie. Rate-cut hopium is evaporating. Inflation fear is muttering in the corner again. Macro is in chaos mode.
🔎 Today’s Focus — Spark doesn’t equal momentum
The sequence of events is telling: first NVDA delivers indisputably strong numbers, then the jobs print comes and throws ambiguity into the mix. Traders looked at the income statement and cheered. Now they are looking at the economy’s heartbeat and wondering whether it’s a low-grade pulse or flatline. The uptake in tech cheers fueled hopes of a “return to growth,” but the labor market’s mixed signals, combined with still elevated yields, mean conviction remains sidelined. Position sizing should mirror this: you participate, but you hedge. Because the market is no longer chasing only upside. It’s testing the downside.
⚡ The Setup
SPY ~ 653.53 | NDX ~ 24054.38 | QQQ ~ 585.67 | RUT ~ 2305.12 | BTC ~ 85572.23 | ETH ~ 2788.76 | US10Y ~ 4.102% | DXY ~ 100.163
Let’s walk through the plumbing. NVDA’s Q3 revenue of $57 billion (a 22% quarter-on-quarter increase) sets up a tech narrative that’s still alive. Yet the post-earnings movement on NVDA’s shares was muted, reflecting that investors are more cautious than impressed.
At the same time, the September jobs report, delayed by the federal shutdown, showed higher job creation than expected but also a higher unemployment rate and downward revisions to previous months. That mix raises questions: is the economy strengthening or stalling?
Yields remain sticky. The green shots in equities are being measured against the fundamental cost of capital and macro risk. Traders are comparing NVDA’s triumph to the broader economic trenches. Because the tape is not just about company results now, it’s about context. Know the narrative and your place in it. Size accordingly.
🧩 Market Archetype — Recovery with Distrust
We are in a phase where the engine (tech, AI, growth) is sputtering back to life, but the road is muddy. This archetype is characterized by strong individual signals (NVDA beat) embedded in weak aggregate signs (labor softness, yield strength). It’s a recovery scenario, but one where participants are forcing hope rather than riding conviction. The result: higher risk of snapbacks, lesser reward for full longs. Thinking this as “goods in transit” rather than “shipment delivered” is critical.
🧭 Flow Pulse
Flows moved back into megacap tech because Nvidia earnings stand in the middle of the room like a spotlight. Money tiptoed into crypto as well, though the move felt like reflex rather than revelation. Small caps continued to pout.
The VIX collapsed by more than 4%, which tells you traders were aggressively unwinding hedges. The MOVE index climbed, a reminder that bonds still smell like smoke.
Forked Feed take: These flows do not say confidence. They say, “Fine, I will try again, but if you crash on me, I am telling everyone it was your fault.”
🔮 Forked Forecast — Functioning but Fractured
~45% chance the market grinds higher over the next few sessions, fueled by tech tailwinds and maybe some good macro data.
~35% chance we drift sideways with occasional spasms, as earnings stay decent but macro remains muddy.
~20% chance of a meaningful pullback if labor data disappoints further, yields spike, or growth-hyped stocks fail to defend themselves.
Catalysts to watch:
NVDA guidance and how AI demand holds up.
Next labor data and wage trends; are we healing or stalling?
Treasury yields and central-bank rhetoric: if financing costs rise, growth stories get less premium.
Treat this market like a borrowed car with a full tank but you don’t know when the brakes might fail. Ride carefully.
💬 Final Thought
Today you saw tech live up to expectations and labor data throw a wet blanket over the party. That’s the condition of this tape: real signals, mixed context, and no easy answers. Price moved. That’s good. Conviction? Still out for coffee. Until the engine revs and the road proves solid, protect size, demand structure, and always leave the exit door unhinged.
📖 Available Now!
Have you grabbed your copy of Forked Nations yet?
7 Stories. 7 Broken Nations. One Signal That Never Dies.
A Bitcoin fiction anthology for the post-sovereign age, brought to you by the same corrupted minds behind The Forked Feed.
👉 Get your ebook, paperback, and hard cover copy, or read it with your Kindle Unlimited account, at Amazon today!
🔗 Stay Connected
Twitter: @txwestcapital
Twitter: @theforkedfeed
YouTube: TexasWestCapital
Website: TheForkedFeed.com (coming soon)