Welcome to Real Vision. It's Friday, January 8, 2021, just after market close in New York. This is the Real Vision Daily Briefing.

I'm Ash Bennington joined shortly by Real Vision CEO and co-founder, Ral Powell. But first, with the day's stories, Jack Farley.

Thanks, Ash. The Bureau of Labor reported today that for the month of December, the U.S. labor market lost

140,000 jobs.

This is the first time the non-farm payroll number

has been negative since April of last year,

and it's well below the 40,000 that was expected by economists.

By sector, the job market in retail, transportation, and businesses services grew by 0.8%,

but these modest gains were more than offset by the leisure and hospitality sector, which shrank by a

calamitous 3.7 percent, a loss of 498,000 workers, almost half a million.

Since last February, the hospitality sector has net shed 3.9 million workers a total

loss of 23.9 percent. This labor data released an hour before the opening bell did little to worry the equity markets in the first few hours of trading

although they did fade throughout the day before rallying in the afternoon.

While action in the bond market today was unremarkable, precious metals had a tremendous sell-off, with gold down 4%,

one of the largest drops over the past year, and silver was down a whopping 9%.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin continues to point skyward. One

Bitcoin now trades at over $40,000. I think Rall and Ash may have a few things to

say about that. And speaking of unrelenting northward marches, Tesla rallied hard up 6% for the day.

It's now worth some $820 billion. It's

capitalization to Google than it is to Walmart. The company's Captain Elon Musk is now the world's richest man,

and he seems to have gained the ability to move money

with just the twitch of his finger.

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