# The Data Void That Ate November

Markets don't fear what they can see. They fear what they cannot.

The longest government shutdown in US history has ended, leaving behind something more unsettling than the shutdown itself: a month-long erasure of economic signal. For six weeks, the machinery that generates consumer confidence readings, labor statistics, and inflation data stopped running. The BLS won't release October's jobs and inflation figures—they may never exist. September's data is scheduled for November 20. Until then, we are operating on archived information from a different macroeconomic universe.

This void didn't create the market's current instability. It weaponized it.

## What Happened on Thursday

The Nasdaq fell 2.29%. The S&P 500 dropped 1.66%. The Dow sank 1.65%—the worst day for all three indices since October 10, when US-China trade tensions flared. These weren't marginal moves. These were capitulation moves dressed in technical language.

The proximate cause was familiar: Fed officials, speaking on Wednesday and into Thursday morning, suggested uncertainty about December rate cuts. Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta Fed called labor market signals "ambiguous and difficult to interpret." Others indicated patience. The Bloomberg probability of a December cut collapsed from 66% the previous Friday to 41% by mid-week.

But here's what actually happened: investors realized they've been making decisions about the future of monetary policy without access to the information that should inform those decisions. The September jobs report shows one thing. But you don't have October. You don't have November yet. Consumer sentiment peaked in October at a preliminary 53.6, then fell to 50.3 in November. That's a 6% drop in one month. Retail sales grew 2.9% year-over-year in October, down from 3% in September. China's industrial production rose 4.9%—the weakest since January. But the timeline is fractured. You're reading November data through a September lens.

When you take away the calendar of expectations, you get noise. Pure noise. Every headline becomes overweighted because there's no baseline data to contextualize it.

## The Structural Problem Beneath

This is where something architectural broke, and nobody seems to be rebuilding it.

The Federal Reserve's entire policy framework rests on data dependence. Powell has repeated this phrase so many times it's become incantation. We are data dependent. We look at the employment situation. We look at inflation. We let the statistics guide us. This was always a bet that the data would be continuous, reliable, and timely. A six-week erasure of that data doesn't interrupt the framework—it reveals that the framework has no reserve when the flow stops.

What filled the void was hawkish commentary. When you can't see the picture, you project onto the screen. Bostic didn't have the October jobs report. He couldn't see whether labor market momentum was accelerating or decelerating. So he issued guidance based on principle: inflation is sticky, labor market signals are mixed, therefore we should not rush. His statement became market fact, not because it was grounded in fresh data, but because it was the only signal investors could read.

Tech stocks, which benefited from expectations of rate cuts as long as those expectations existed, immediately re-priced. The Nasdaq had fallen 5% from its October 29 record high even before Thursday's collapse. Nvidia dropped 3.6%. Palantir fell 6.5%. Oracle sank 4.15%. Tesla tumbled 6.6%. These stocks rose on the assumption that an easing Federal Reserve would lower hurdle rates and extend growth runways. Without that assumption, their valuations compress.

Friday's bounce was the retest. The Nasdaq gained 0.13% to finish at 22,900.59, snapping a three-day losing streak. The S&P 500 finished near flatline, down just 0.05% at 6,734.11, while the Dow lost 309.74 points to settle at 47,147.48. Micron jumped 6.8%. AMD climbed 1.4%. Nvidia rose 1.2%. But this was a technical oversold bounce, not conviction recovery. The VIX remained elevated at 20, signaling that volatility expectations hadn't declined even as prices rebounded. The market held its breath.

## Why China Matters in This Story

You might have overlooked it in the noise: China's retail sales grew 2.9% year over year, marking their slowest pace since last year. Results from Singles Day also showed modest growth. Industrial production in China rose 4.9%, its smallest gain since January. Investment in fixed assets decreased by 1.7% year over year. This is a deceleration. Not catastrophic, but directional.

The American growth story has been built partly on the premise that global demand remains intact even if domestic consumption slows. China's industrial data doesn't break that premise entirely. But it cracks it. When the world's second-largest economy sees fixed asset investment fall and industrial growth hit a nine-month low, the earnings growth that justifies tech valuations starts to look contingent rather than inevitable.

The timing is peculiar. US investors are supposed to be celebrating the end of the shutdown and the resumption of data flow. Instead, they're confronting evidence that global growth dynamics have cooled. Both are true. Both are adverse. The shutdown + hawkish Fed + China slowdown = a triple negative that hit all at once because the shutdown compressed the timeline. All three truths landed in the same narrow window.

## The Real Cost of Missing Data

Here's what troubles me most about this week: nobody knows how long it will take to normalize expectations once the data starts flowing again.

Typically, when you release delayed data, you release it in bundles. September's employment data on November 20. October's employment and inflation data sometime in late November. These won't come in clean. The October jobs report won't have an unemployment rate because the household survey couldn't be completed during the shutdown. You'll have nonfarm payrolls. You'll have the participation rate. But the central statistic—the rate itself—will be missing. That's like releasing a quarterly earnings report without net income.

When you combine uncertainty about the underlying data with the Fed's need to make a December decision, you create a scenario where the Committee will have to vote while acknowledging data gaps. Some will see this as a reason to hold. Others will see it as a reason to cut—we don't have the information to tighten further. The market doesn't know which interpretation will prevail. That's why the probability of a December cut keeps falling. It's not hawkishness. It's epistemic uncertainty. We don't know what the Fed knows, because the Fed doesn't know what it should know.

By November 20, when September's jobs report lands, we'll also have four more weeks of layoff data, continuing claims figures, and real-time labor market signals through other channels. Investors will likely have regained some confidence in the picture. But confidence and reality are different things. This week proved that markets can remain dislocated from fundamentals when the data infrastructure breaks. It also proved how quickly expectations can unwind once they're cast in doubt.

## What Traders Are Watching

The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow "nowcast" for Q3 GDP remained at +4.0%. The economy hasn't collapsed. Growth is still real. But the composition of that growth—whether it's driven by labor, capex, or just inventory—remains obscured. Initial jobless claims dipped to 227,543 for the week ended November 8th from 228,889 in the prior week. That's tight. But it's one week of data, and it's from before the shutdown ended.

Earnings season is winding down. Scholar Rock jumped 23% after completing an FDA meeting for a spinal muscular atrophy treatment. Figure Technology Solutions surged 20% after posting earnings per share of 34 cents against FactSet estimates of 16 cents. Individual companies can still deliver surprises. But the market's overall orientation has shifted from bottom-up (stock-picking, company by company) to macro (top-down, how many cuts does the Fed deliver?). In an environment where macro data is MIA, that orientation becomes paralyzing.

## The Larger Pattern

Markets have always been organized around scarcity. When capital is scarce, asset prices fall. When confidence is scarce, volatility rises. But data scarcity is rarer, and its effects are more corrosive. Data scarcity doesn't change supply or demand. It changes *expectations about change*. And when you remove data while central banks are trying to guide markets through forward guidance, you flip the causality. Instead of Fed policy responding to data, Fed communication *becomes* the data. The economy hasn't changed. Your ability to see the economy has.

This is what happened this week. The shutdown ended. The machine restarted. But the historical record from the months it was off remains incomplete. We're navigating by partial maps.

The market will adjust. It always does. New data will flow next week. The Fed will make a December decision based on incomplete information (they always do, but usually they can hide it). Equity prices will find a new equilibrium. But something has shifted in how investors understand their own uncertainty. They've been reminded that the modern financial system runs on an assumption—continuous, reliable data—that can be interrupted. And when it is, the entire hierarchy of decision-making unravels down to the lowest level: fear.

That's the real story of November. Not the shutdown. The void it left.