US job growth slowed in January, according to federal data released Friday, with the 143,000 jobs added coming in well below the 170,000 economists expected. But unemployment dipped a tenth of a percentage point to 4% and wages rose more than expected at a pace of 4.1% year-over-year.

The US dollar just shrugged off the mixed results, with the so-called dollar index — a gauge of the value of the dollar against a basket of six world currencies — rising 0.4%. If the dollar keeps climbing, it could be a problem for the stock market and the broader economy.

Upward Pressure

The dollar index has risen roughly 7% from a late-September low, and remains near a more-than-two-year high touched in January. Two main factors are helping maintain its muscle.

The first is America’s nothing-can-stop-me economy. Last month, the International Monetary Fund downgraded the outlook for several advanced economies including the Euro Area and Canada, but left its overall forecast for 3.3% global growth in each of 2025 and 2026 largely unchanged. That’s because the US economy is expected to pick up the slack, with the IMF revising its growth forecast up a half point to 2.7% for 2025.

The second factor is President Donald Trump’s promised protectionist trade policies. Trump told reporters on Sunday that he plans to launch new 25% tariffs this week on steel and aluminum, after launching a new 10% levy on China and delaying 25% levies on Mexico and Canada for a month last week. Tariffs make imports cost more, usually leading to fewer customers buying them. That reduces the need for foreign currencies and makes the dollar stronger. Which is great, unless you’re in the export business: 

• Technology stocks, which have been the market’s roaring engine for the past two years, rely on foreign sales, something a strong dollar could depress. For companies in the S&P 500 Information Technology sector, 56% of aggregate revenue came from outside the United States in the last 12 months, compared with 41% for the broader index, according to data from FactSet.
• Apple and Amazon warned in recent weeks that they expect foreign exchange to have a “negative” (in Apple’s words) or “unfavorable” (in Amazon’s) impact on revenue. In its latest earnings release, issued last week, Amazon’s guidance for the first quarter identified foreign exchange rates as a $2.1 billion headwind.

Talking It Out: The greenback actually fell over the course of the week, from a 109.88 dollar index high to 108.1, because Trump’s decision to pause the tariffs on Canada and Mexico to negotiate was taken as a sign that he’s willing to make deals rather than engage in a protracted trade war that would make it harder to lower interest rates, among other things.

We saw something here at The Daily Upside we hadn’t seen in so long we barely recognized it: honest-to-goodness good news.

Research from blockchain data platform Chainalysis published last week found that in 2024 the amount of money paid out by victims of ransomware attacks — when hackers seize data and/or shut down key systems and extort money in return for the stolen data and system access — fell by 35% from the year before to $813.6 million. That’s down to a cocktail of causes, Jacqueline Burns Koven, Head of Cyber Threat Intelligence at Chainalysis, told The Daily Upside. “It’s difficult to determine one key factor, but the decrease was driven by a combination of increased law enforcement actions, improved international collaboration, fragmentation of the ransomware ecosystem, victim preparedness, and a growing refusal by victims to pay,” said Koven.

A Pauper’s Ransom

Total annual ransomware payouts have been trending upward for years (with 2022 being an exception), and 2023 notched a record-breaking $1.25 billion in extorted money. The first half of 2024 was no different, per Chainalysis’ data, but after July, payouts by ransomware victims dropped sharply.

This drop is in part explained by law enforcement cracking down on prolific online gangs, disrupting arguably the most centralized part of the ransomware market:

• The FBI, UK’s National Crime Agency, and Europol managed to infiltrate and disrupt the online gang Lockbit in February last year, and Chainalysis noted a 79% drop in the group’s ransomware payouts in the second half of 2024. 
• In June, Spanish police arrested a 22-year-old British man alleged to be the leader of ransomware group Scattered Spider, although The Register reported at the end of last year that the group was picking up steam again.

Lizzie Cookson, Senior Director of Incident Response at Coveware, a firm that works with cyber-extortion victims, told Chainalysis that no one had moved into the market niche left behind by large ransomware gangs. “We saw a rise in lone actors, but we did not see any group(s) swiftly absorb their market share, as we had seen happen after prior high-profile takedowns and closures,” Cookson said. “The current ransomware ecosystem is infused with a lot of newcomers who tend to focus efforts on the small- to mid-size markets, which in turn are associated with more modest ransom demands.”

Consumer Confidence: One expert told Chainalysis that another reason for the lower ransomware payouts is that targeted cybercrime gangs, desperate to retain street cred after getting a black eye from law enforcement, tried plumping up their lists of stolen data. Some of that data, however, was either old or completely made up. “This is especially true of LockBit, which, in a bid to remain relevant after being ostracized by much of the underground community post law enforcement action, has published as high as 68% repeat or straight-up fabricated victims on its data leak site,” Allan Liska, threat intelligence analyst at Recorded Future, told Chainalysis.

Waffle House’s suffering is our suffering. 

Last week, the beloved (mostly late night) breakfast chain announced it’d be adding a $0.50 “egg surcharge,” yoking customers with the extra costs that come from a national egg shortage and skyrocketing prices caused by the avian flu outbreak. Eggflation is bedeviling nearly every link in the food supply chain. Oh, you’ve noticed?

Shell-Shocked

Egg prices are actually not quite as high as they were in January of 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but they’re getting close. That’s one sign that we’re now in the third year of the current wave of the avian flu — and historically speaking, past waves have only lasted a single season. “Unfortunately, I look at all of it as just part of the new status quo of where we are in the world,” Gregg Majewski, CEO of Craveworthy Brands and former CEO of Jimmy John’s, told The Daily Upside.

Worse, avian flu cases seem to be escalating. According to the latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture, 7 million chickens were culled in November, followed by 18 million in December and 23 million in January. In other words: Expect the volatility to stay. And, for at least the foreseeable future, we’re on the price upswing part of the cycle:

• The process of disinfecting and verifying the safety of a farm “can be lengthy,” Dr. Elaine Vanier, technical scheme lead of animal welfare at food safety certifier NSF, told The Daily Upside. And afterward, it takes a new flock of chickens up to 16 weeks to start laying eggs.
• The months-long setback is likely to affect prices for the rest of the year. Last week, the USDA said egg prices are likely to rise as much as 20% before the end of 2025.

What Came First? “Data suggests that consumers have largely shaken off higher egg prices thus far,” R.J. Hottovy, Head of Analytical Research at Placer.ai, told The Daily Upside. The real system shock would be if the avian flu starts affecting the price of chicken itself, which would be “five times as bad for the restaurant industry,” Majewski said. So far, there’s no indication that chicken products will be affected, and it’s unlikely they will be. But let’s not count our chickens before they… well, you get it.