CNBC Business News Update - Market Close: Stocks Mixed, Meta Reportedly Backs Off "The MetaVerse," Announced Layoffs Top 1.1 Million Year To Date 12/4/25

Episode Date: December 4, 2025

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I'm Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. Wall Street opens Friday morning after a volatile, and in the end, flattish day for the major averages. The Dow was in the red down 31 points. 3M shares let it lower. They were down more than 2%. The S&P 500 index up 7, the NASDAQ, up 51. Invidia shares were up 2% on Thursday.

Companies who shares hit fresh all-time highs Thursday They include Goldman Sachs, Caterpillar, General Motors, Ross, Dress for Less, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. There is a lot of optimism that stocks will go higher as the month and year wrap up. Earnings estimates are still going higher. Seasonality is still there. Since the seasonal strong period began, the market's up small. So there's still about 4% higher just to get to the average what we typically see this time of the year. Cantor Fitzgerald's Eric Johnston on CNBC.

Facebook parent meta reportedly scaling back its Metaverse plan, cutting jobs and pivoting to AI and AI devices. Shears were up more than 3% as investors cheered, but some investors are worried that the labor market is rolling over. Layoff announcements this year have hit 1.1 million as of November the most announced job cuts in five years when the pandemic hit. Employers announced 71,321 layoffs last month. This is according to the job placement firm Challenger Grand Christmas, and it is a 24% jump from a year earlier. That Challenger data has continued to point to elevated layoffs and is seen as problematic for the labor market. A lot of the other data does point to weakness, ADP, negative number

on private sector jobs. CNBC's Sarah Eisen, and here's a take from CNBC's Mike Santoli. Confirms somewhat kind of low metabolism labor market. The other people, piece of it is you have like 200,000 plus boomers retiring every month, and I just think companies are able to have attrition do part of the work. Now outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas says employers announcing more layoffs tell them they're either restructuring, responding to economic conditions, or simply closing the business. Morgan Stanley's chief investment officer tells CNBC the job picture likely won't be getting much better. Jobs are really the linchpin to how we need to think about the economic future.

I mean, this is what everybody's going to react to. So the jobs data that's going to come out after the FOMC meeting, when that comes out, I fully expect the jobs data to get worse. Morgan Stanley's Jim Caron on CNBC. Bids for Warner Brothers Discovery are in. Paramount Skydance wants to buy the media giant that owns a movie studio, HBO, Max, and CNN. But so do CNBC parent Comcast, Disney, and Netflix.

Warner Brothers Discovery executives, want to have the sale process wrapped up by the end of this month. It's been made a couple of times by all the parties. There is an expectation now that Paramount, if it wants to win, it's going to have to come back at an even higher price. CNBC's David Faber. On Friday's watch list, we get some earnings from Victoria's Secret. We get a peak at inflation with the PCE Personal Consumption Expenditures Report.

Sports Illustrated will announce it Sports Person of the Year. In theaters, Universal's five nights at Freddy's two, Sony's merrily we roll along, IFC's 100 Nights of Hero and Lions Gates, four and a half hour, kill Bill the whole bloody affair, the Powerball Jackpot Friday night, $820 million. Jessica Eddinger, CNBC. CNBC, live ambitiously.