| Good morning. Treasuries and stocks fall again after one of the worst starts to the year in history, with the Federal Reserve minutes later and jobs data at the end of the week. Here's what's moving markets. — Sam Unsted US Treasuries are lower once again and stocks are mostly flat after investors pulled back some of December's blockbuster rally in the first trading day of the year. Tuesday's in-tandem fall for stocks and bonds marked among the worst concerted drops for the pair ever. The dollar headed in the opposite direction, however, notching up its best single-day gain since March as traders pared bets on Federal Reserve rate cuts for the coming year. Bitcoin rose too, albeit for other reasons. Meanwhile, gold and oil came under pressure from a stronger dollar. Focus will turn to the release of the Federal Reserve minutes later, ahead of which the greenback is holding gains. Within individual stocks, Apple shares suffered their biggest drop since September, the biggest contributor to the Nasdaq 100's worst one-day fall since October. Note, that is after the tech-heavy index rose 54% last year. Apple itself picked up a new bear in the form of Barclays, which warned on softer iPhone demand. JPMorgan Chase, however, continued its strong run following a 2023 when its shares outperformed its banking industry peers, hitting a fresh record for the first time in two years. The Fed minutes, due at 2 p.m. New York time, are expected to broadly back the dovish narrative that took hold at the end of 2023. That meeting saw officials signal an end to the rate-hiking cycle, fueling bets on the first rate cut. The minutes may include some pushback on those expectations, though nothing too strong is anticipated. Ahead of the minutes today, investors will contend with the ISM manufacturing reading and JOLTS job data, with the latter setting the stage for the payrolls report on Friday. That's expected to show a labor market in the US which is gradually weakening but staying resilient. The ISM numbers, however, could matter more for the overall picture than the Fed minutes, as Mark Cudmore explored on Bloomberg TV earlier. This is what's caught our eye over the past 24 hours. It's JOLTS day. At 10 a.m. ET, the data is expected to show 8.82 million job openings. A year ago, this would have been a really big deal, as the Fed was highly focused on job openings as a measure of labor market tightness. Of course, over 2023, inflation eased considerably, and perspectives have changed. That being said total openings are still well above pre-COVID measures. On the one hand, you can look at this chart and say "look, things eased!" And generally speaking, companies are reporting a much easier time hiring than they were a year ago. But again, if you take openings at face value, the absolute level of openings is still extremely high. However that hasn't been an impediment to the disinflation that we've seen. On the other hand, there is a sense in which this chart looks like the type of bullwhip we've seen elsewhere in the economy. When the pandemic first struck, companies felt they had too many workers. The economy quickly rebounded, and the dominant fear among firms was being short labor. So then companies scrambled to catch up, aiming to order up as many workers as they could. Since the peak, we've been in a normalization phase of firms finding the right level of employees. So there are really two ways to view this chart. One is that the economy got crazy hot, and now it's cooling off. The other way is simply that it's evidence of massive disruption, and companies scrambling to address the disruption which is now going away, as the initial pandemic shock fades further back into history. Follow Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal on X @TheStalwart Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. | 
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