Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day

Bank stocks and Bitcoin are exceptions to Wall Street’s down day. The Israel-Hamas war resumes. Here’s what people are talking about.

Wall Street kicked off the week with losses, with both stocks and bonds down in a signal that traders’ aggressive pricing of Federal Reserve rate cuts may have gone too far. “We’ve had the great rally and now it’s just kind of a ‘chillax’,” Tony Dwyer at Canaccord Genuity says. Bank stocks were rare outperformers, with the benchmark KBW Bank Index rising for a fifth day, touching the highest since early August. The index is still historically cheap on a price-earnings basis. It has tumbled 13% this year, while the S&P 500 has soared 19%. (Watch for news and comments about top bankers’ expectations during the Goldman Sachs financial services conference, which runs Dec. 5-6, in NYC.) Bitcoin was another exception, holding firm following a weekend rally that took it above $42,000, extending a rally to more than 150% this year.