US Jobless Rate Falls to 4.1% as Rate-Cut Odds Slip; Scuba Exits Stealth With $34M

US October unemployment fell to 4.1% with 165K jobs added, well above the 60K expected, and August-September were revised up by 84K.
FedWatch-implied odds of a hike rose to 77% from 67% the prior day, per Liz Ann Sonders.
Bitcoin and gold are both down in 2026, a combination the author says has not occurred in any prior calendar year.
AI-linked names dominate a narrow S&P 500 leadership, with drawdowns from highs ranging from -26% for Nvidia to -66% for Sandisk.
Scuba emerged from stealth with $34M in funding for a shared context engine aimed at teams and their agents.
Jason weighed in on advertiser pullouts tied to Scott Galloway's remarks about Elon Musk, defending sponsors' right to exit.

US October unemployment fell to 4.1%, better than the 4.2% expected, while 165K jobs were added against a 60K consensus; August and September were revised up by a combined 84K and hourly earnings rose 3.1% year over year. The same post said the Fed would hike again in December 1. Separately, unemployment has now stayed below 5% for 62 consecutive months, the second-longest streak on record behind a 64-month run starting in the mid-1960s 2.
Citing CME FedWatch data, Liz Ann Sonders said the implied probability of a hike rose 10 percentage points in a day, from 67% to 77% 1. This is a market-implied reading rather than a policy decision, and it points in the same direction as the December hike expectation in the jobs post 2 3.

In 2026 to date, bitcoin is down 13% and gold is down 6%, making them the two worst-performing major assets; the author says this pairing has not happened in any prior calendar year 1.
As of the November 5 low, the S&P 500 was -6% and the Nasdaq 100 -15% from their highs, with semiconductors falling far more: Nvidia -26%, TSMC -28%, SK Hynix -39%, AMD -39%, Broadcom -41%, Micron -48%, Applied Materials -57%, Lam -58%, Intel -64% and Sandisk -66% 1. Over ten years, Nvidia returned +11,159% and bitcoin +10,587%, versus +313% for an S&P 500 ETF and +199% for a gold ETF, while US inflation rose 39% and a US bond ETF returned +16% 2.
The author cited a claim that 19 of 20 S&P 500 doubles this year were AI-related, a narrow leadership pattern typical of speculative manias, and said this was confirmed after the fact; the current leaders differ from those in June 1. This is the author's characterization, not a measured result.

Scuba exited stealth with $34M in funding: Accel led the pre-seed and co-led the seed with IVP, with BoxGroup, Conviction, Homebrew and ScribbleVC participating and angels including founders from Slack, Instagram, Stripe, LinkedIn and Salesforce 1. Scuba is described as a shared context engine for teams and their agents, usable in Slack, Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and MCP-supporting tools; the team says the whole company runs on it with under two hours of meetings a week 2.
Reid Hoffman argued the team, not the individual, is the real unit of work, and that AI should sharpen team collaboration rather than just speed up individuals; he said he was proud to back Scuba 1.

Jason said he does not favor censorship but that incitement to violence is unacceptable, and that if a podcast host implies a tech CEO should be executed over disagreement, advertisers stopping sponsorship is their right; he said he respected Perplexity's decision 1. A reposted Perplexity statement said it had halted all future spending on Prof G Markets and pulled existing placements, acting immediately after a prompt from @KatieMiller, and described the spend as a small third-party agency test 2.
Jason also said he had faced personal safety issues amounting to less than 1% of Musk's, and that investing in private companies is a privilege whose decisions he respects 1. A reposted item said Galloway is a Boom investor and that a buyout of his stake was being arranged 2; this is a claim from a repost, not independently confirmed.

Meb Faber noted that the Yale endowment beat a low-cost endowment ETF over one year, but that the ETF's long-term record is still expected to top more than 80% of endowments 1. He also criticized California's "billionaire tax" ballot measure, which would have touched roughly 300 people out of about 40 million residents and failed; he attributed the defeat to distrust that politicians would use the money well and to moral objections, and proposed teaching money, capitalism and entrepreneurship in public schools plus a federal alternative minimum wealth tax with funds placed directly in investment accounts 2.
Raoul Pal argued tokens should not be the product and the chain is just infrastructure, with users eventually buying stocks without knowing they run on a chain; he said traditional finance entering crypto is good because crypto remains hard to use and TradFi will tighten processes 1.

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