U.S. January Non-Farm Employment Data Significantly Surpasses Expectations; Meta Invests Over $10 Billion in New 1-GW Data Center

Market Review

On February 12th, Beijing time, both Japan and South Korea stock markets opened higher. The Nikkei 225 index opened up 0.37%, at 57,866.32 points; the Korea KOSPI index opened up 1.3%, at 5,423.96 points.

The three major U.S. stock indexes closed slightly lower on February 11th. At the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.13%, to 50,121.4 points; the Nasdaq Composite declined 0.16%, to 23,066.47 points; the S&P 500 remained flat at 6,941.47 points.

The three major European stock indexes on February 11th showed mixed performance. The UK FTSE 100 index closed at 10,472.11 points, up sharply by 118.27 points or 1.14% from the previous trading day. The French CAC 40 index closed at 8,313.24 points, down 14.64 points or 0.18%. The German Frankfurt DAX index closed at 24,856.15 points, down 131.70 points or 0.53%.

In international precious metals, spot gold rose over 1% in late trading, at $5,083.7 per ounce, after reaching a high of $5,100 per ounce earlier; spot silver surged over 4%, at $84.3 per ounce.

International Macro

Trump will consider becoming Prime Minister, stating that reaching an agreement with Iran would be the “preferred” option. According to Xinhua News Agency, U.S. President Trump held a closed-door meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House on February 11th. Afterwards, he posted on social media that reaching an agreement with Iran would be the U.S. “preferred” option. The meeting lasted about three hours. Trump described the meeting as “very good” on social media, but also said that, apart from his insistence on continuing negotiations with Iran in hopes of reaching an agreement, the U.S. and Israel did not achieve any substantive results.

U.S. non-farm payrolls for January exceeded expectations, dampening market expectations for rate cuts. On February 11th, local time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that non-farm employment increased by 130,000 jobs in January, significantly surpassing market expectations and marking the largest increase since April last year. The strong non-farm data further delayed market expectations for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates. Currently, the market prices in a rate cut by the Fed in July, compared to previous expectations of June.

Corporate News

Meta invests over $10 billion to build a 1-gigawatt data center. On February 11th, Meta announced that as part of its large-scale AI infrastructure development plan, the company has begun constructing a new data center. This data center, with an investment exceeding $10 billion, will be located in Lebanon, Indiana, with a capacity of over 1 gigawatt. This power scale is sufficient to supply electricity to hundreds of thousands of American households.

Amazon Internet Satellite constellation doubles in scale. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced approval of Amazon’s application to deploy 4,500 satellites. This move will expand the company’s planned satellite constellation, allowing it to better compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX. FCC approval brings Amazon’s planned low Earth orbit satellite constellation to approximately 7,700 satellites.