Brian Stewart, seeking Alpha's director of news.

Welcome to 2025 and welcome back to the show.

Great to be talking to you again.

Yeah, you too.

Great to be back.

So holiday season has come and gone.

What are we paying attention to in the markets? What are we thinking about so far?

We've been facing kind of a slow market the last few weeks. Today we're recording on Thursday

and the markets are closed because of Jimmy Carter's funeral. So we're now in our third straight

week of a holiday week. Next week will be the first full trading because of Jimmy Carter's funeral. So we're now in our third straight week of a holiday week.

Next week will be the first full trading week of 2025, but then there'll be another holiday week after that for MLK Day.

So we're having a little trouble getting started with 2025. But good news is there is data on the horizon.

Jobs data coming out. We've got inflation data next week. We also

have earnings seasons starting to get ramped up next week as well. So we should be kind of through

the desert at this point and onto an area where we can actually trade on some information.

So what is the information you're paying most attention to? Well, so in the absence of fundamental

stock-related information over the last few weeks, we've seen a bunch of markets kind

of intertwine in the way people are thinking about them. So most prominently recently,

it's been the treasury market. People have turned their attention there. It's been seeing higher rates recently. So the 10-year Treasury reached 4.7%. It was at 3.7% as of September.

Meanwhile, the 20-year top 5% for the first time since 2023. All this has happened while the Fed has been cutting rates, Fed has cut 100 basis points

or a full percentage point from its prime rate, from its key rate since September. I mean,

while rates have been going up. So it kind of signals ongoing inflation worries, which is why the Fed is expected to pause at its next meeting.

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