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Posted December 17, 2025 at 12:09 pm
Tech stocks stumbled after disappointing earnings from major names, raising questions about whether optimism has finally run too far. Scott Bauer of Prosper Trading Academy joins Jeff Praissman to break down market rotation, confusing economic data, crypto’s recent pullback, and what investors should watch next.
The following is a summary of a live audio recording and may contain errors in spelling or grammar. Although IBKR has edited for clarity no material changes have been made.
Hi everyone, this is Jeff Praissman with the Interactive Brokers Podcast, and it’s my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast studio Scott Bauer from Prosper Trading Academy. Hey Scott, how are you?
Jeff, I am great. How about yourself?
I’m doing well. I’m doing well. And it was great seeing you out in person in Las Vegas last week at your Ultimate Trades Experience. Once again, we’re back in the studio for our Wednesday five-minute market summary. So, Scott, this past week we saw a tech sell-off, led really by Oracle and Broadcom. How surprised was the market by those earnings disappointments?
I think there was some optimism going in, but the prevailing theme right now is, as we’ve seen, any sort of downbeat guidance or any sort of miss, these stocks are getting punished. Is that because there’s the so-called AI bubble? I don’t really think so. But I think people—investors, retail—they’re being very cautious right now, and the first move is to be protective and sell first. So it was not great for the market, but if you look more macro, more overall here, in that theme of rotation that we’ve seen over the last week or so, I think the market’s held in there pretty well.
Jeff Praissman: Yeah, no, I think that’s a good point right there. And we had touched on this in previous podcasts with the government shutdown a while ago and how this kind of important information has been getting delayed. Yesterday, the government report on unemployment was released, showing the U.S. unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the highest it’s been in four years. But from the outside, it’s a little confusing, right? With all these delays and everything, we also saw that 64,000 jobs were gained. How does the market process this information?
I think “confusing” is an understatement, and I don’t know how the market processes it, right? Because on one hand, maybe we have not-so-great news. On the other hand, maybe that 64,000 number—which six months ago would have been horrific—is now kind of being cheered as a good number. So I think it’s just a data point, unfortunately, Jeff, and we can’t put too much into it until we get all the catch-up numbers and until maybe two or three months down the road to see what the actual current trend in the employment market is. I think we saw that yesterday in the market. We saw the S&Ps down, what, 50 or 60 points at one point, and then pretty much back to the flat line. It’s surprising to me we didn’t see volatility pop a little bit more, and that just tells me that most people are looking at this as, “Okay, this is what it is—we’ve got to catch up.”
Got it. And kind of keeping in line with the subject of reports, we have some key numbers being released over the next few days as well, such as the November CPI, new home sales data, and the final GDP number. Which of these could have the biggest effect on the market if they surprise either to the upside or the downside?
I think the inflation data—CPI or PCE. To me, that one directly correlates with you, with me, with all the people out there spending money. So if we get a headline that inflation is not just still sticky but maybe even ticked up, we’ve got, what, one week or so left going into Christmas and the holidays here. Those people that maybe haven’t spent yet might pull back a little bit further. So to me, that inflation data is going to be the most critical.
And let’s pivot a little bit to crypto. With the recent slide of Bitcoin, has crypto lost some of its luster? It seemed like it was riding high with the Fed sort of accepting it as the future a couple of weeks ago, and now all of a sudden we get that kind of—I don’t want to say crash, that’s not the right word—but definitely a big correction.
I think what we’ve seen is more of a disconnect. All of the things that we thought about Bitcoin over the last several years—how it moved with the bond market, equities, the dollar, the Fed—that’s all kind of disconnecting right now. So I don’t know that it’s lost its luster. It’s certainly not topping the headlines any longer, but I think there needs to be a new narrative for the bulls to take over here. They can’t count on this being a store of value or some of the old things that we’ve relied on, even though this is still such a new asset class. So sure, it’s out of favor right now. I wouldn’t discount it, but I do think we’re seeing a lot of disconnect between what we thought Bitcoin traded on and what it really is trading on.
Yeah, that makes sense. And finally, I want to wrap it up with the dollar—our old faithful benchmark. How has the dollar fared over the past five days?
There’s been a lot of global news, obviously, and I think the dollar is pretty much in the same spot it was about a week ago. We’ve seen it go from around 98.5 at the top to about 97.5 on the bottom, and now we’re sitting right in that middle range, around 98 or so. There are a lot of people in the camp saying the dollar is only going to get stronger from here, and a lot of people in the opposite camp as well. There’s just so much global uncertainty with central banks right now—what is Japan going to do, what are we going to do, the dissension in the Fed. The dollar is a range-bound trade right now. Very short term, it could break out. If we get above the 98.5–99 level, look out to the upside. If we break down below 97.5, there could be some room to the downside.
Scott, this has been great as always. Thank you for swinging by the studio. For our listeners, you can find more from Scott at prospertrading.com, as well as on our website, IBKR.com. Go to Education to find past webinars, past podcasts, and articles. Always a pleasure to have you here, Scott, and we’ll see you next Wednesday.
Thank you, Jeff.
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