The jobs report just flipped the Fed script 🔀

Welcome back to the Day Trading newsletter 📈

SpaceX faceplanted and then bounced, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed Friday at record highs, and a shocker of a jobs report rewrote the entire September Fed debate in one morning.

Let’s get into it 👇️ 

📆 Tuesday 8/11 — CoreWeave earnings (after close): The AI-cloud giant kicks off a big week for the AI-capex theme that whipsawed SpaceX and AMD this month. Watch spending guidance as closely as revenue.

📆 Wednesday 8/12 — July CPI (8:30am ET): The single most important data point of the week. Consensus sees 0.2% headline and 0.3% core; a hot print would revive the September hike odds the jobs report just crushed.

📆 Thursday 8/13 — July PPI + jobless claims (8:30am ET): Wholesale prices preview where consumer inflation heads next. Claims get extra scrutiny after July's negative payrolls print.

📆 Thursday 8/13 — Applied Materials earnings (after close): The chip-equipment bellwether's guidance is a proxy for the entire AI capex cycle — the theme that whipsawed SpaceX and AMD this month.

📆 Friday 8/14 — July retail sales (8:30am ET) + UMich consumer sentiment (10am ET): The first hard read on whether a weakening job market is bleeding into spending. Watch the low-income consumer trends The Trade Desk flagged.

🔻 The Trade Desk plunged 22% Friday to a seven-year low after missing Q2 estimates and guiding Q3 below consensus. Revenue of $715.1 million fell short of the $751.4 million analysts expected. CEO Jeff Green blamed tariffs, higher oil prices, and weaker spending by lower-income consumers — a warning sign for the whole ad market. (Yahoo Finance)

🏘️ Airbnb surged 15% Friday after a Q2 beat and a raised full-year outlook. Revenue rose 17% to $3.61 billion and EPS of $1.37 topped the $1.26 estimate. Management guided Q3 revenue to $4.69–$4.77 billion, ahead of estimates, and CEO Brian Chesky said the company will spend "a lot more" on AI. (CNBC)

🚀 SpaceX jumped 11% Friday, leading a space-stock rally, after its first post-IPO share lockup expired without the feared insider selloff. The unlock was the big overhang after Wednesday's 13% post-earnings drop; when the wave of selling never came, buyers piled back in. Intuitive Machines and Rocket Lab rallied too. (24/7 Wall St)

🥇 Gold jumped 2.4% Friday to around $4,353 an ounce, capping its best week since January. The weak jobs report dragged Treasury yields and the dollar lower, exactly the backdrop gold loves. Silver rallied about 4% to a six-week high. Cooling rate-hike bets keep the metals bid. (Yahoo Finance)

🛢️ Brent crude fell more than 7% this week even as the Strait of Hormuz reopening deal everyone expected failed to materialize. Iranian state media published a draft plan Thursday that would ban U.S. and Israeli ships from the Strait. Brent settled Friday at $83.55; a real deal would likely mean cheaper gas. (CNBC)

👊 Bitcoin punched back above $65,000 after the jobs report reset Fed expectations. Crypto-linked stocks like Coinbase, Strategy, and Robinhood rallied with it. With futures markets now leaning toward a September pause, traders are treating this week's CPI as the next big directional catalyst for crypto. (Yahoo Finance)

💉 Moderna rose 4% Thursday after the FDA approved mFlusiva, the first-ever mRNA flu vaccine, for adults 50 and older. The shot was 26.6% more effective than a standard-dose flu vaccine in a 40,000-person trial and should be available this fall — a badly needed win for Moderna's post-COVID pipeline. (CNBC)

💻️ IonQ climbed 3.8% Thursday after posting record Q2 revenue of $80.1 million, up 287% from a year ago. The quantum-computing company raised full-year revenue guidance to $280–290 million from $260–270 million and closed its $1.8 billion SkyWater acquisition, bringing chip fabrication in-house. (Benzinga)

The U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July. Economists expected a gain of about 83,000, so this wasn't just a miss, it was a reversal.

Worse, the two prior months were revised down by a combined 103,000, cutting June's gain to just 20,000 and dragging the 12-month average pace of job creation down to roughly 34,000 a month.

The unemployment rate actually ticked down to 4.1%, but for an unhealthy reason: the share of Americans working or looking for work fell to 61.4%, the lowest in over five years.

Losses were led by local government education and retail, while healthcare was one of the few sectors still adding jobs.

Heading into Friday, the Fed under Chair Kevin Warsh was widely expected to consider raising rates in September to lean against sticky inflation.

One ugly payrolls print changed that: odds of a September hike fell from the mid-50s to the low 40s in percentage terms, per the CME FedWatch tool.

Markets treated the bad news as good news (no hike means cheaper money for longer) and the S&P 500 rose 0.6% to a record 7,757.64 while the Nasdaq jumped 1.3% to its own record, capping the market's best week since April.

Treasury yields fell, the dollar hit a two-week low, and gold logged its best week since January.

What to watch:

• Wednesday's CPI report is now the tiebreaker. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management's Ellen Zentner put it plainly: the weak jobs print eases pressure on the Fed, but "next week's inflation data will still likely be the deciding factor" for the September 16 meeting.

• A hot CPI alongside shrinking payrolls would raise a nastier question (stagflation) and that's a scenario stocks are not priced for.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: Not financial advice. Do your research before making any trades.