Labor Market Flex

The U.S. added a record number of jobs in January as unemployment fell.

February 12, 2026

Your Daily Dose of Market & Career Clarity

📬 Delivered to 150,000+ ambitious readers

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🎯 In this issue:

  • Banana Bits: Finance headlines that actually matter

  • Market Summary: Surprise in job data leads to a decline in equities

  • What’s Ripe / Rotten: The tastiest and most disgusting stocks today

  • Technical Trip: Interview Q&A from Morgan Stanley

  • Deal Deep Dive: M&A, IPO, and transaction breakdowns

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

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Integration with Microsoft Word and Excel allows you to preview documents in their functional form. Unlimited data storage means you can keep uploading without worry, and around-the-clock support is always there when you need it. In addition, a comprehensive permission manager helps you grant access down to the document level—a clear and easy tool to avoid access mistakes.

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Market News

Surprise In Job Data Leads to Decline in Equities

A stronger-than-anticipated U.S. jobs report spurred a slide in Treasuries as traders pared bets on Federal Reserve rate cuts in 2026.

An initial rally in major stock benchmarks waned. Cr*ptocurrencies slumped. Short-dated Treasuries were hit the hardest, with two-year yields hovering near 3.5%.

Money markets now price in the Fed’s next cut in July, up from June previously. Nearly 300 S&P 500 shares rose on hopes that economic growth will fuel earnings, but the index was little changed as most megacaps fell.

An ETF tracking software firm slid 2.6%. B*tcoin sank to about $67,500. U.S. payrolls rose in January by the most in more than a year, and the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell, suggesting the labor market continued to stabilize. Employers added 130,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate slid to 4.3%.

What's Ripe

Vertiv Holdings LLC (VRT) 24.5%

  • VRT jumped 24%. The data center infrastructure provider beat earnings expectations and guided for a blockbuster 2026

  • Vertiv expects earnings of between $5.97 to $6.07 a share this year, well above Wall Street’s previous forecast for $4.85.

BETA Technologies Inc. (BETA) 15.6%

  • BETA rallied 16% after Amazon.com disclosed a stake in the aerospace start-up, which is working to electrify aircraft.

  • A regulatory filing revealed Amazon owned about 11.8 million shares of Beta, about 5% of the stock outstanding.

What's Rotten

Mattel Inc. (MAT) 25.0%

  • The toy maker sank after missing analysts’ fourth-quarter earnings and revenue targets.

  • The dismal report came just a day after shares in rival Hasbro hit a six-year high following much better results due to the “standout performance” of revenue tied to its digital card game “Magic: The Gathering.”

Lyft Inc. (LYFT) 17.0%

  • LYFT plummeted 17% after the ride-hailing platform reported weaker-than-expected revenue for the fourth quarter and issued so-so guidance.

  • Some analysts have been fretting about the ride-hailing and food-delivery markets as consumers rein in spending and robo-taxis threaten to disrupt the industry.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Morgan Stanley

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🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

If d = 1/[(2^3) * (5 ^ 7)] is expressed as a terminating decimal, how many nonzero digits will d have?

Answer: 2

Today

Team A and Team B are competing against each other in a game of tug-of-war. Team A, consisting of 3 males and 3 females, decides to line up male, female, male, female, male, female. The lineup that Team A chooses will be one of how many different possible lineups?

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I’d be a bum on the street with a tin cup if the markets were always efficient.

Warren Buffet

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Happy Investing,
Chris, Vyom, Ankit, Mitchell, Fernanda, & Patrick