Chapter 1: What are the implications of Bitcoin falling below $70K?
Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.
Good afternoon. Today is Thursday, February 5th, and I'm your host, Kim Kahn. Our top story so far. That's the way the crypto crumbles. Bitcoin kept sliding through key levels, falling below $70,000 for the first time since late 2024, as it continues to take the brunt of risk-off moves.
With Bitcoin now knocking at the door of $65K, it would have to roughly double from here to get back to its all-time high. And according to data cited by the Kobesi letter, the total digital asset market has shed more than a trillion dollars in value since January 14th, about $45 billion in losses a day and counting.
Echoing Michael Burry's warning that the sell-off could turn into a death spiral, Richard Farr, chief market strategist at Pivotous Partners, says his price target for Bitcoin is 0.0. That's not just for shock factor.
Chapter 2: How is Hims & Hers impacting the healthcare market?
It's where the math takes us, he posted. He argued Bitcoin has failed to function as a dollar hedge and instead trades as a speculative instrument correlated to the Nasdaq. No serious central bank will ever own something where strategy co-founder Michael Saylor controls the float, he added.
Crypto-related stocks are also getting hit hard, with Robinhood, Coinbase, Strategy, Riot Platforms, and Hut8 all under pressure. Among active stocks, Hims & Her's Health is surging on a report the telehealth platform is planning to launch cheaper compounded versions of Novo Nordisk's Wagovi weight loss drug.
The report says Hims would roll out its version at an introductory price of $49 a month, about $100 less than the brand name. Estee Lauder is the S&P 500's biggest decliner after issuing full-year revenue guidance below forecasts. The company said it's taken about a $100 million hit from tariffs so far.
And Barrick Mining says it will move forward with plans for an IPO of its North American gold operations while retaining a significant majority stake. Those assets account for more than half of Barrick Gold's production and about 60% of its value.
Chapter 3: What do recent jobless claims indicate about the economy?
Looking to the economy, the official January jobs report is delayed, but traders still got a trio of labor market updates today, and none of them were good news. Weekly initial jobless claims rose more than expected to 231,000. Challenger reported employers announcing 108,000 job cuts in January, the highest start to a year since 2009, and the biggest monthly total since October.
And the Joltz report showed job openings fell to 6.542 million in December, well below the 7.245 million consensus. Pantheon macroeconomist Samuel Toombs says about two-thirds of the drop in openings came from professional and business services, which he says may suggest AI is persuading a growing number of companies to pause on new hiring.
In other news of note, Spotify is expanding beyond digital streaming into physical book sales through a new partnership with Bookshop.org. The deal will let premium subscribers in the U.S. and U.K. buy hardcovers and paperbacks directly in the app starting this spring. Why physical books again?
Chapter 4: How is Spotify expanding into physical book sales?
Despite years of predictions about the death of the bookstore, demand, especially among younger readers, has surged. And a lot of that momentum is being driven by BookTok, TikTok's book community where viral recommendations can send readers straight to specific titles. And in the Wall Street Research Corner, Jeffries says 73% of software stocks are now oversold, the highest percentage on record.
Broader Tech isn't far behind, with about 45% of tech names in oversold territory. Jeffries adds that IGV, the iShares Expanded Tech Software ETF, is now more oversold versus the S&P 500 than at any prior point in history. Meanwhile, Wedbush says the market is pricing in a near-term doomsday scenario for software, but calls that extremely overblown.
The firm argues many customers won't rush into aggressive AI rollouts if it puts their data at risk. Analyst Dan Eyes characterized the current moment as a table-pounder, timed by oversold names like Salesforce, CrowdStrike, Microsoft Oracle, and ServiceNow. Wedbush also recommends Palantir and Snowflake for the software apocalypse.
That's all for today's Wall Street Lunch.
Chapter 5: What are the predictions for software stocks amid market changes?
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