November nonfarm payrolls came in at -533,000.  This was far worse than expectations of a 350,000 decline and probably beat the whisper number of -450k to -500k.  This was the worst reading since December 1974, when NFPs fell 602k. 

So what happened to stocks in December 1974? 

Equities hit bottomed and rallied 75% over the next two years! 

One obviously has to be careful extrapolating past events onto current conditions.  For example, in 1974, the American workforce was about half of what it is now, and a comparable decline in NFPs today would be a million jobs lost.  Perhaps the proper comparable to today’s NFP print was November 1974, which saw a decline of 368k jobs.  But even so, the market bottomed a month before November 1974.

In 1975, jobs continued to be lost.  The NFP prints for the first six months of 1975 were

January -360k
February -378k
March -270k
April -186k
May +160k
June -104k

1.138 million jobs were lost during the first half of 1975.  The stock market rose 41%.

This does not necessarily mean stocks have hit bottom and are not going lower in the future.  However, the market is a discounting mechanism and will start moving higher before the bad news ends.