What happened today?
Markets started up, then finished several points down.
Effect was more extreme on some high beta stocks.
E.g. NBIS
Why?
Monthly Net Nonfarm payrolls dropped today. (How much non farm payrolls changed in a month) https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/non-farm-payrolls
According to that indicator, it beat consensus, so markets jump. (Previous: 48k; Consensus Forecast: 70k; Actual: 130k)
The headlines mimic that story: https://archive.is/N7rHg
The headline of that article is very bullish.
However, the much more impactful story is not the last month. In the same announcement, they revised 2025 annual net Nonfarm payrolls almost 900,000 lower.
The government said, “oopsie, we added a million fewer jobs in 2025 than we were claiming before. No big deal, right?”
It turns out, a million jobs is a pretty big deal to the economy.
As it happens, this was the largest downward revision since 2009. (Credit).
And when people actually read the report instead of meme-ing off the Bloomberg headline, markets crashed a little bit.
Is that headline intentional market manipulation? You decide, America.
Is that market manipulation an opportunity to print lots of money, if you give AI the right context to:
- Flag articles that are misleading (headline is X, but real story is Y)
- Flag articles that are big enough to move markets (Nonfarm payrolls is one of most important reports, that every economist is paying attention to)
- Identify what the misleading story is, and alert a human operator to trade bigly.
Most definitely.