I sink, therefore I am... While the S&P 500 was busy hitting record highs, Carnival dropped the anchor. Shares of the world's largest cruise company fell 5% for the week, after three of Carnival's cruise lines pushed back sail dates to follow government protocols. Still, the cruise operator seems upbeat about its advanced bookings for 2021, and the stock has rallied 50% since November. BTW: Carnival is dropping earnings today — analysts are expecting sales to be down a whopping 97% from last year.
Hitting reverse... The pace of jobs recovery has been slowing for months, but now the US is actually losing jobs again: the US economy shed 140K jobs in December, the first monthly net loss since April. Hospitality accounted for most of that as Covid cases surged. Bars and restaurants got hit hardest, losing nearly 400K positions as California banned outdoor dining. The unemployment rate remained flat from November at 6.7% (nearly double the pre-pandemic rate). But investors shrugged off the report, looking ahead to vaccines and more stimulus.