Hurricane Helene Follow - Chimney Rock , NC

Natural disasters significantly reduced US job growth for October (Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

US job growth slows on hurricane impact, but negative revisions are the bigger worry

October numbers are well below expectations and the job growth trend has slowed to 2012 and 2019 levels.

11/1/24 8:38AM

Nonfarm payroll growth tumbled to just 12,000 for October, well below the 100,000 economists were anticipating.

We knew the hurricanes that ravaged the East Coast would have an impact on this report — we’d seen the fingerprints of these natural disasters all over the weekly initial jobless claims data — so there was always going to be extreme uncertainty on this particular month’s reading.

According to the BLS, 512,000 Americans in nonagricultural industries were unable to work in October because of bad weather, about 10x the historical norm for this month from 1995 through 2023.

But what’s much more concerning are the whopping -112,000 in negative revisions to the prior two reports. August job growth — first reported as +142,000 — is now down to 78,000, the worst reading since December 2020.

We’ve been a little whipsawed by US labor-market data lately, with jobs growth coming in below expectations in July and August only to crush estimates in September. Stepping back, the underlying trend in US job growth is clearly slower, and to a concerning degree. The six-month average — excluding this report — is now at 147,833.

That’s on par with levels we saw in 2019, when the Federal Reserve was cutting rates from a much lower starting point than at present, and in 2012, the worst stretch for job growth during the prepandemic economic expansion.

Bonds are rallying sharply, with 10-year Treasury yields down almost 10 basis points from pre-jobs levels.

Luke Kawa5h

Trump administration says tariffs on Chinese semiconductor imports are coming... in 2027

After a year-long investigation into China’s tactics to bolster its domestic semiconductor industry, the US has determined that its practices are “unreasonable” and is going to do something about that in 18 months.

The Trump administration’s office of the US trade representative said today that it plans to impose tariffs on imports of Chinese semiconductors at a rate higher than 0% to be decided at least 30 days before June 23, 2027.

“China’s pursuit of its dominance goals has severely disadvantaged US companies, workers, and the U.S. economy generally through lessened competition and commercial opportunities and through the creation of economic security risks from dependencies and vulnerabilities,” per the USTR’s notice of action.

These levies, should they come to pass, would apply to silicon, diodes, transistors, and more.

US markets were completely unbothered by this revelation, likely because there is no immediate action against Chinese semi companies and therefore no disruption to business-as-usual. This represents a punting of a contentious matter, similar to how China delayed restrictions on rare earth shipments as part of a deal between Presidents Trump and Xi following their October meeting.

It’s another sign of a thaw in the US-China relations over the hot-button issue of semiconductors after President Trump gave Nvidia the go-ahead to sell its H200 chips to buyers in the world’s second-largest economy.

Luke Kawa5h

ServiceNow strikes deal to buy cybersecurity firm Armis for $7.75 billion in cash

ServiceNow has agreed to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis for $7.75 billion in an all-cash deal, the largest purchase in the company's history.

That price tag is $750 million above what Bloomberg suggested was the top end of what Armis would cost just last week, and about $1.65 billion above what the company had been valued at in a November funding round.

Armis had been readying itself for an IPO, with many major investors looking to take a stake in the firm.

Instead, it’s now a key cog in the software platform company’s bid to lean on cybersecurity features to bolster its appeal to customers in a world in which the rise of AI adds to the potential threats of business disruptions and data breaches.

Per the press release:

As rapid AI adoption expands the attack surface for organizations, real-time visibility into vulnerabilities and actionable insights for what to fix first are critical to minimize risk and strengthen security posture. The acquisition of Armis will extend and enhance ServiceNow’s Security, Risk, and OT portfolios in critical and fast-growing areas of cybersecurity and drive increased AI adoption by strengthening trust across businesses’ connected environments.

Claire Yubin Oh9h

Novo Nordisk rallies after FDA weight loss pill approval

Novo Nordisk’s US-listed shares are up 7% in pre-market trading on Tuesday after the US Food and Drug Administration approved its Wegovy weight loss pill on Monday evening.

Now the first pill of its kind to receive approval from the regulator, Novo’s Wegovy pill is expected to launch in the US in early January 2026, and awaits the European Medicines Agency and other regulatory authorities’ approval after submitting for review in the second half of 2025, per the company’s press release. The 1.5 milligram starting dose of the pill will be sold at an introductory price of $149 a month.

“The pill is here. With today's approval of the Wegovy^® pill, patients will have a convenient, once-daily pill that can help them lose as much weight as the original Wegovy^® injection,” said Mike Doustdar, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk.

The approval was based on Novo’s Oasis 4 trial, which found participants who took 25 milligram doses of Wegovy pills daily lost 16.6% of their body weight over a 64 week period.

The approval will give Novo — which lost more than 50% of its market cap this year after Eli Lilly took the crown in weekly US prescriptions for injectable weight-loss drugs with its product Zepbound — a first-mover advantage in the expanding market. Lilly, which is down some 1% in pre-market trading today, has said its own oral drug orforglipron could be approved by March 2026.

Tasha Matsumoto

23h

Stocks rise for the third-consecutive session, erasing December losses

Santa baby, just slip a rally under the tree...

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - DECEMBER 23: Benny the Bull, the Chicago Bulls mascot, dresses as Santa Claus in the game against the Milwaukee Bucks during the second half at the United Center on December 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

Matt Phillips12/22/25

‘Golden age of profit margins’ seen in 2026

Wall Street tends to be a pretty optimistic place. But on one measure, market watchers are the most optimistic on record.

FactSet data shows the consensus estimate for S&P 500 net profit margins in calendar year 2026 calls for the gauge to climb to 13.9% in 2026.

But if borne out by events next year “it will mark the highest (annual) net profit margin reported by the index since FactSet began tracking this metric in 2008,” wrote John Butters, senior earnings analyst at the financial data company.

A recent story from Barron’s also commented on the expectations for especially fat profit margins embedded into forecasts for next year.

“We are in the golden age of margins,” RBC’s Capital Markets’ head of US equity strategy, Lori Calvasina, told the magazine.

That’s good news for investors looking forward to next year. But the follow up question, of course, is where the growth in profitability is expected to come from. The answer, as you might have guessed, is tech. Though the precise mechanisms by which those profits land in the coffers of the giant tech firms remains something of a mystery. Barron’s doesn’t get into the details, saying “call it benefits from AI, pricing power, or whatever.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like money in the bank. But even die-hard haters of AI have to acknowledge that betting against the ability of giant tech companies to generate massive profit growth has been a bad trade for the last couple decades.

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