Short Squeez

🍋 Welcome to the AI IPO Era

Short Squeez — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“eBay’s run by a bunch of losers.” — Ryan Cohen, GameStop CEO

Good Morning! JPMorgan's private credit trading push is gaining traction after a slow start, while Permira is holding off on launching its evergreen credit fund amid BDC turmoil. And JPMorgan's bet on early-stage companies is paying off, cementing its lead in global tech investment banking.

Volatility is fueling new private equity deals as old assets sit frozen in portfolios. Jeb Bush's Finback Investment raised nearly $500 million for a new fund. And private equity backers are slamming "runaway" legal costs from top law firms.

Plus: Blackstone's data center REIT raised $1.75 billion in its IPO, and Trump's DOJ moved to drop fraud charges against Indian billionaire Adani after he pledged $10 billion in US investment.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Welcome to the AI IPO Era

The IPO market just got its loudest "we are so back" signal yet. Cerebras, the AI chipmaker challenging Nvidia, raised $5.55 billion in the largest U.S. tech IPO since Uber in 2019, then ripped on day one.

Shares priced at $185, opened at $350, got halted for volatility, and closed up 68% at $311.07, valuing the company at roughly $95 billion. Not bad for a company that scrapped IPO plans in both 2024 and 2025.

Cerebras' IPO market cap was already close to $40 billion, a 73% step-up from its $23 billion Series H in February 2026. By Thursday's close, it was worth ~$95 billion. That's more than 4x in four months.

Cerebras had raised around $3 billion from investors including Alpha Wave, Benchmark, Eclipse, Fidelity, and Foundation Capital. Other backers included AMD, Coatue, Bow River Capital, Altimeter, 1789 Capital, DataPower Capital, Flybridge, and Atreides Management. For anyone who got in before the IPO, this was a reminder that the public market will still wildly reprice AI winners when the story is hot enough.

Nvidia is still king, but investors are desperate for credible challengers. Cerebras makes chips built for inference, where the market is shifting from "train the biggest model" to "serve answers instantly and cheaply." CEO Andrew Feldman says Cerebras makes "the fastest token" and is 15x faster than the next competitor.

It also helps to have the right AI names on the S-1. OpenAI launched its first model on Cerebras chips earlier this year and signed a cloud deal worth more than $10 billion through 2028. AWS is setting up Cerebras chips in its data centers, and both Amazon and OpenAI hold warrants.

Takeaway: Cerebras' debut is the clearest sign yet that the IPO window is open again, well at least if you're an "AI" company. The bankers may have left some money on the table with the first-day pop, but in this market it's really anyone's guess what AI companies are worth. With only 31 tech IPOs in 2025 (down from 121 four years earlier), Cerebras just showed every AI company what's possible in the public markets.

PRESENTED BY FISHER INVESTMENTS

Keep Your Retirement Right on Track

Successful investing, especially for retirement, involves more than making the right moves. It’s also about avoiding the wrong ones.

Fisher Investments can help you steer clear of common mistakes. Grab their guide, 13 Retirement Investment Blunders to Avoid, and learn ways to position a $1M+ portfolio for success.

Want a sneak peek? The guide highlights common investing mistakes, like being too conservative in investing, paying excessive fees and mismanaging withdrawals.

Ready to enjoy the retirement you’ve saved for? Start your journey here .

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Major U.S. indexes hit fresh record highs, led by continued strength in technology and AI-related stocks
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed back above 50,000, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq also reached new highs
Nvidia approached a $6T market cap, while Cerebras Systems surged 75% following its IPO
WTI crude oil was little changed around $102 per barrel as investors monitored developments in the Strait of Hormuz
Treasury yields finished mixed, with the 2-year Treasury yield rising back above 4%
The U.S. dollar strengthened, while gold prices edged slightly lower

Retail Sales Show Consumer Resilience

Retail sales rose 0.5% in April, marking a third consecutive monthly increase
Excluding gas stations, spending still rose a solid 0.3%, suggesting consumers continue spending despite higher fuel costs
Stronger tax refunds and a stable labor market continue helping support household spending
Initial jobless claims remained near historically low levels, reinforcing the view that labor conditions remain healthy

Trump-Xi Summit in Focus

Investors continue monitoring developments from the ongoing Trump-Xi summit in China
Discussions centered around trade, Taiwan, and the Iran conflict
The tone from both sides appeared more constructive today, with comments supporting stronger economic cooperation
President Trump also said China would not provide military equipment to Iran and could help support negotiations tied to reopening the Strait of Hormuz

Movers & Shakers

(+) Klarna ($KLAR) +20% after Q1 revenue hit $1B, up 44% year-over-year — while adjusted operating profit surged to $68M from $3M YoY.
(+) Stubhub ($STUB) +13% because Q1 revenue of $446M and adjusted EBITDA of $72.1M both beat estimates.
(–) Doximity ($RGTQ) -23% after the healthcare professional network company’s Q4 EPS missed estimates.

Prediction Markets

The next great trading commodity is data compute.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Recursive Superintelligence, a neolab founded by former Google engineers, raised $650 million
Quantum Systems, a German drone startup, is in talks to raise around $645 million
Mind Robotics, an industrial robotics spinout from Rivian, raised $400 million
Fractile, a developer of inference hardware for AI, raised $220 million
Create Medicines, a developer of CAR-T therapies, raised $122 million
UroMems, a French developer of implantable mechatronics technology, raised $60 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

How To Rule The World

Description:
A revealing examination from Theo Baker of how elite institutions shape the next generation of power brokers, influence, and decision-makers. Centered around Stanford University, the book explores ambition, networks, status, and the subtle systems that determine who rises to positions of influence. Blending investigative reporting with cultural analysis, it offers a sharp look at how power is cultivated long before people enter boardrooms, politics, or Silicon Valley.

Book Length: 352 pages
Release Date: May 19, 2026

Ideal For:
Readers interested in elite institutions, power dynamics, ambition, and how networks and environments shape leadership and influence.

Power is rarely seized in a single moment, it is accumulated quietly through access relationships and proximity to opportunity.

DAILY VISUAL

Smartphones 12% Cheaper than Last Year

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

An AI Analyst Can Now Turn Your MD’s Comments Into Action

Imagine a world where you can just forward your MD’s email to an analyst and they take care of everything.

Well, that future is here.

On Mosaic’s LBO platform, you can chat with the “AI Analyst” and ask it to update your MD’s comments. Simply tell it what to do, and within 10 seconds, it’ll update your LBO model.

Mosaic is making life easier for hundreds of analysts at firms like New Mountain, CVC, and Warburg.

See it in action today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Forty Percent

Navy SEALs have an informal rule that when your mind tells you that you are done, you are actually only at forty percent of your real capacity. The number is not literal, but the principle is supported by exercise physiology. The brain runs a conservative governor, designed to protect you from injury, that fires the quit signal long before the body has actually reached its limit. Knowing this is a quiet superpower.

The implication is not that you should grind yourself into the ground in every domain. It is that the voice telling you that you cannot do the next call, write the next memo, push through the next hour, is almost always lying. It is a setpoint, not a ceiling. And every time you push through it cleanly, the setpoint moves, because the brain updates its model of what you are capable of.

The people who seem to have endless capacity for hard things are not built differently. They have just renegotiated their relationship with the voice that says stop.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

13 ways to avoid investment mistakes are a click away
Why coaching beats management for retention
7 nice-sounding phrases that are really manipulative
A peak design totebag for everyday use
You’re about to feel the AI money squeeze
What’s the burned haystack dating method?

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Banks Making a Comeback

Short Squeez — Thu, 14 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“Don’t do anything stupid. And don’t waste money. Let everybody else waste money and do stupid things; then we’ll buy them.” — Jamie Dimon

Good Morning! The Senate confirmed Kevin Warsh as the Fed's 17th chair (54-45). Elon Musk's xAI is testing Grok with Wall Street firms, including Apollo and Morgan Stanley. And private credit IR professionals earned a median total compensation of $825K in 2025, a premium compared to other asset classes.

Blackstone walked from a $4B tie-up with New World Development after the developer refused to cede control. It's also prepping a third long-term buyout fund, $800M to $1B checks across 8-10 companies, with a potential 20-year life vs. the usual 10. Wholesale inflation jumped 6% YoY in April, the biggest since 2022.

Plus: Jamie Dimon warns JPMorgan may rethink its new London office if Starmer is ousted as UK PM, and should you try peptides?

Learn how to build intelligent finance agents using Claude Code. Tune in to Daloopa’s webinar today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Banks Making a Comeback

For the last decade, private credit was supposed to be the future of lending. Faster than banks, more flexible than banks, less annoying than banks. Basically: give borrowers money quickly, charge a premium, and tell the banks to pound sand and go enjoy the regulatory paperwork.

But the pendulum is starting to swing back. Private credit lending volume fell 14% in the first quarter, while bank lending to companies jumped 12.7%, the fastest growth since 2022. So some borrowers are going back to the boring old banks.

The reason is pretty simple: banks are getting more competitive, and private credit is getting more cautious. Banks can often lend more cheaply, especially as rules around leveraged lending loosen.

In March, JPMorgan analysts estimated that a typical borrower would pay about 3.75% points over SOFR for a syndicated bank loan, compared with about 4.75% points over SOFR in the private credit market. Private credit can still be faster and more flexible, but if the bank loan is materially cheaper, CFOs tend to rediscover their love for traditional finance pretty quickly.

At the same time, some private credit funds are dealing with their own funding pressure. Investors pulled more than $15 billion from non-listed BDCs in the first quarter, while new fundraising dropped 60% from a year earlier. That matters because if private credit funds are facing redemptions, they cannot keep shoveling money out the door like it is still 2021.

That is creating an opening for banks. Direct lending volume totaled about $61 billion in the first quarter, down roughly $10 billion from the same period last year and about $44 billion from the fourth quarter of 2025. Several public BDCs also reported more repayments than new loans, meaning portfolios are shrinking instead of expanding at the breakneck pace investors got used to.

The bigger issue is credit quality. Investors are getting more nervous that private credit could face higher loan losses, especially in software-heavy portfolios that may be vulnerable to AI disruption. That does not mean private credit is dead, but the asset class is no longer operating in a zero-gravity world where every borrower wants private money and every fund has unlimited cash to deploy.

Takeaway: Private credit is not going away, but the “banks are finished” narrative looks a little tired. When banks can offer cheaper capital, regulators are easing up, and private credit funds are dealing with redemptions and credit concerns, borrowers start remembering why banks existed in the first place. The hottest corner of lending is cooling off just enough for the old-school balance sheets to get back in the game.

PRESENTED BY DALOOPA

How to Build Research Agents and AI-Powered Workflows

As both buy-side and sell-side investment firms look to build internal research agents and AI-powered workflows, many people don’t know where to start.

This introductory session from Daloopa’s CEO Thomas Li provides a step-by-step approach to using Claude Code to build finance agents that can create valuable outputs: investor decks, financial models, and more. And all of this is powered by Daloopa’s comprehensive, audit-ready fundamental dataset across 5,500+ tickers globally, so you can trust your agents’ outputs.

See why so many firms already trust Daloopa. Watch the webinar on demand today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

U.S. equities closed higher despite a hotter-than-expected producer price inflation (PPI) report
Markets appeared more focused on resilient economic growth and strong corporate earnings than inflation concerns
Kevin Warsh was officially confirmed as the next Federal Reserve Chair, succeeding Jerome Powell
Treasury yields moved higher, with the 10-year yield rising to 4.47% as investors reassessed the path for interest rates
International markets were mostly stronger, with investors focused on the start of the Trump-Xi meeting
The U.S. dollar strengthened alongside rising yields and a less-dovish policy backdrop

Producer Inflation Accelerates

Headline PPI rose 6.0% year-over-year in April, well above expectations for 5.0%
Elevated energy prices were again the primary contributor, with energy inflation up roughly 22% from a year ago
Core PPI also surprised to the upside, signaling broader underlying price pressures
Rising trade-services prices suggest tariffs may also be contributing to inflationary pressure
Higher input costs could pressure corporate profit margins if companies are unable to fully pass costs through to consumers
Markets continue to assume much of the inflation spike remains tied to energy disruptions that could normalize if geopolitical tensions ease

Fed Outlook Shifts More Hawkish

Sticky inflation and stable labor-market conditions continue to support a higher-for-longer interest-rate environment
The confirmation of Kevin Warsh reinforces expectations for a potentially different tone at the Fed, though policy decisions will still remain committee-driven
Investors increasingly expect the Fed to stay patient before considering additional easing
Any future rate cuts likely depend on:
- Energy-price normalization
- Cooling inflation trends
- Further easing in Middle East tensions

Movers & Shakers

(+) Nebius ($NBIS) +16% after Q1 revenue surged 684% year-over-year to $399M on strong AI demand.
(–) Birkenstock ($BIRK) -13% because the retailer missed Q2 estimates on both earnings and revenue, blaming the Iran War.
(–) Wix ($WIX) -27% after adjusted earnings came in below consensus, with forward guidance also disappointing investors.

Prediction Markets

Chances are Ken Griffin won’t be the only billionaire with his eyes on Miami.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Anduril raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation
Isomorphic Labs, an AI drug discovery company spun out of Google’s DeepMind, raised $2.1 billion
Photonic, a Canadian quantum computing startup, raised $200 million
Exaforce, an agentic cybersecurity startup, raised $125 million
Havoc, a developer of AV software and hardware, raised $100 million
Star Catcher, a developer of a power grid in space, raised $65 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Yesteryear

Description:
A thought-provoking novel from Caro Claire Burke that blends historical fiction, social commentary, and emotional introspection. The story explores themes of identity, belonging, and the tension between progress and nostalgia, following characters forced to confront how much of the past should be preserved versus left behind. Rich in atmosphere and human complexity, the novel examines the emotional cost of trying to recreate an idealized version of history.

Book Length: 352 pages
Release Date: April 7, 2026

Ideal For:
Readers who enjoy literary fiction with emotional depth, social themes, and reflections on identity, memory, and the pull of the past.

The danger of longing for the past is forgetting why the future had to be built differently.

DAILY VISUAL

Tomato Prices Surge 40%

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY GREENLAND ENERGY COMPANY

The Land of Liquid Gold?

For the past year, Greenland has been the center of a geopolitical conversation that spans the White House, NATO, and every major energy desk on Wall Street. The US Geological Survey has estimated the island holds roughly 31 billion barrels of oil equivalent in untapped resources, and the Trump administration has made Arctic resource security a cornerstone of its foreign policy agenda.

One key player, Greenland Energy Company, already holds the rights to earn up to a 70% working interest across the Jameson Land Basin, the largest onshore basin on the island, which equates to roughly 13 billion barrels. It covers more than two million acres with 58 identified prospects and a drilling campaign contracted to Halliburton. They’re scheduled to start drilling in the second half of 2026.

Read more about GLND and the opportunity here.*

DAILY ACUMEN

Protein First

The order in which you eat your food changes how your body responds to it. Eating protein and vegetables before the carbohydrates on your plate measurably blunts the blood sugar spike that follows the meal, which means a steadier afternoon, fewer energy crashes, and less of the post-lunch fog that quietly degrades decision quality for hours.

This is not a diet. You are eating the same food. You are just sequencing it in a way that works with your metabolism instead of against it, and the effect is large enough to show up on a continuous glucose monitor.

The highest-leverage health interventions are rarely about willpower or restriction. They are about small structural changes to things you were going to do anyway, and this is one of the cleanest examples there is.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How long should you stay in the sauna?
The best athleisure for work
Is qigong a good way to start your day?
Should you try peptides?
5 lessons from an AI startup disrupting a $30B industry

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Make As Rare Again

Short Squeez — Wed, 13 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

"I often describe Goldman Sachs as a human assembly line. Our human assembly lines will become more digitized, digital agents will be our robots." — John Waldron, Goldman Sachs President

Good Morning! eBay formally rejected GameStop's $55 billion takeover bid, calling it "neither credible nor attractive." Trump called Ken Griffin an "amazing businessman" on the radio and urged Mamdani to "cherish billionaires," warning it's "not recoverable" for NYC to lose people like him.

Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy advisers have billed $80 million and counting, led by Davis Polk at $26 million and FTI Consulting at $24 million. And Anthropic is in talks to raise $30 billion at a $900 billion valuation.

Plus: e.l.f. Cosmetics co-founder Scott Vincent Borba is giving up his fortune from the $3 billion business to be ordained a Catholic priest on May 23, Blue Owl reported a 95% YoY drop in retail investment inflows. And Goldman's president says the bank is a "human assembly line" facing automation.

AI may be hot, but oil is still king. And, Greenland Energy potentially has a lot of it. Learn about the opportunity here.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Make A’s Rare Again

Harvard is considering a crackdown on grade inflation, which means the easiest part of being a Harvard student may no longer be getting an A.

Faculty are voting this week on a proposal that would limit solid A grades to 20% of students in a class, plus four extra A’s per course. The move comes after A’s basically became the default grade in Cambridge.

Solid A’s now account for nearly two-thirds of all undergraduate grades, up from roughly one-quarter 20 years ago. More than 50 students in last year’s graduating class reportedly finished with perfect GPAs, which is impressive, but also kind of defeats the purpose of grades.

If everyone gets an A, the A stops telling employers, grad schools, and scholarship committees very much. Harvard is trying to restore some signal to the transcript. The problem is that at elite schools, the signal is not just academic. It feeds directly into recruiting, especially for investment banking, consulting, law school, and other prestige-track jobs where small differences in GPA can become résumé-screening ammo.

That is where this gets messy. If Harvard students now have to fight to land in the top 20% of every class, the recruiting calculus changes. Instead of spending sophomore fall networking with bankers, drilling accounting technicals, and pretending they have always been passionate about M&A, students may spend more time protecting their GPA. That creates a real trade-off: do you chase the A in a class full of other kids who all got 1550s, or do you spend that time building the relationships and interview reps that actually get you the Goldman first round?

And it is not like Harvard students suddenly got less smart. That is part of the problem. At schools like Harvard, a huge share of the class is capable of A-level work. So a cap does not just separate the prepared from the unprepared. It forces professors to rank highly qualified students against each other in a much tighter curve.

Supporters say the proposal is modest because it does not cap A-minuses, and the extra four A’s help smaller seminars. Critics say it creates quota-style grading and could hurt students competing against peers at schools without similar restrictions.

There is also precedent for the backlash. Princeton and Wellesley both tried anti-grade-inflation policies and later rolled them back after concerns about stress, quotas, and unintended consequences.

Princeton’s own review found no measurable harm to graduate competitiveness, but the perception still mattered. In elite recruiting, perception is half the game. Nobody wants to be the school where students have to explain that their 3.55 is actually good because the faculty decided to get stingy with A’s.

Takeaway: Harvard’s grade inflation problem is real. When two-thirds of grades are A’s, the transcript starts looking more like a participation trophy. But capping A’s creates a different problem: students may spend even more time optimizing for GPA and less time building the skills, networks, and interview reps that actually matter for jobs. For Wall Street recruiting, the irony is pretty rich. The school trying to make grades more meaningful could make students even more obsessed with them.

PRESENTED BY GREENLAND ENERGY COMPANY

The Land of Liquid Gold?

Read more about GLND and the opportunity here.*

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

U.S. equities closed lower after April CPI inflation came in modestly hotter than expected
The pullback reflected a broader risk-off tone, with technology and consumer discretionary stocks leading declines
Defensive sectors including health care and consumer staples outperformed
Treasury yields moved higher as investors pushed back expectations for future Fed rate cuts
International markets were weaker overnight, with both Asian and European equities finishing lower
WTI oil prices continued climbing amid ongoing disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. dollar strengthened against major currencies alongside higher bond yields

Inflation Remains Sticky

Headline CPI rose 3.8% year-over-year in April, slightly above expectations of 3.7%
Elevated energy prices remained the primary driver, with energy inflation up nearly 18% from a year ago
Core CPI also ticked higher to 2.8%, reinforcing concerns that inflation normalization may take longer than hoped
Shelter inflation accelerated as well, adding further upward pressure to the report
Persistent inflation, combined with a stabilizing labor market, likely keeps the Fed firmly on hold in the near term
Markets increasingly view policy easing as delayed unless energy prices meaningfully normalize later this year

Labor Market Continues to Stabilize

ADP employment data showed private employers added an average of 33,000 jobs per week over the past month
Hiring trends remain modest but continue moving gradually higher
Slower labor-force growth tied to demographics and immigration trends is helping support low unemployment despite softer hiring levels
The broader labor backdrop still points toward:
- Limited layoffs
- Stable household income growth
- Near-full employment conditions

Movers & Shakers

(+) Wendy’s ($WEN) +17% after Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management, the chain’s largest shareholder with a ~16% stake, is seeking investor backing to take the company private.
(–) Hims & Hers ($HIMS) -14% because Q1 revenue missed estimates and the company cut its full-year revenue guidance.
(–) Under Armour ($UAA) -17% after fiscal 2027 EPS guidance missed analyst estimates.

Prediction Markets

Watch Wednesday: the Omega Index
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Digital Asset Holdings, creator of the Canton blockchain network, is raising around $300 million
Paymentology, a card issuing and processing platform, raised $175 million
Forus, a provider of software for administrative management of prescriptions, raised $160 million
Zyg, an Israeli e-commerce scaling platform, raised $60 million
Astrocade, a games creation platform, raised $56 million
Vapi, an AI voice platform, raised $50 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Winner’s Curse

Description:
A fascinating exploration of the quirks, biases, and irrational behaviors that shape markets and decision-making, from Richard H. Thaler and Alex Imas. Revisiting some of the most influential concepts in behavioral economics, the book examines why people consistently make flawed financial decisions and how those patterns still impact markets today. It blends classic anomalies with modern examples to show how psychology continues to influence investing, auctions, pricing, and risk-taking.

Book Length: 304 pages
Release Date: October 21, 2025

Ideal For:
Investors, operators, and anyone interested in behavioral economics, market psychology, and understanding why rational markets are often driven by irrational human behavior.

The biggest mistakes in markets often happen when people believe they are behaving rationally.

DAILY VISUAL

Memory Loss

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

Wall Street’s New Assistant Doesn’t Sleep

For years, breaking into banking meant earning your stripes in PowerPoint. That trade is dying.

Purpose-built AI is quietly reshaping the deal lifecycle. No, your favorite AI alone won’t cut it. Foundation models are table stakes. The real edge is software that automates the 80% every firm does the same way (memos, decks, CIMs) so teams can spend real time on the 20% that actually wins mandates: judgment, relationships, pattern recognition.

For juniors, this means less formatting and more deal reps. For MDs? A Bloomberg-style view of the pipeline instead of prompt babysitting.

Learn more about how Blueflame AI is doing this for Wall Street’s top firms.

DAILY ACUMEN

Resting Pulse

Your resting heart rate is one of the most underrated predictors of how long you will live and how well you will perform under pressure. A lower number means your cardiovascular system is doing the same work with less strain, which translates directly into better stress response, faster recovery, and more capacity to think clearly when things get hard.

Most people on Wall Street are walking around with resting heart rates ten to twenty beats per minute higher than they should be, and they have no idea because it never gets measured. The body is essentially idling at high RPM all day, burning through resources just to stay still.

Bringing that number down is not glamorous work. It is months of consistent cardio at low intensity. But the dividend it pays, in years of life and quality of every one of them, is enormous.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Why leadership traits don’t determine a successful leader
The neuroscience behind letting it go
The Strip comes to the Village
Why it’s harder to use miles to book your flights
Why the rich and powerful want to live forever

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

*This is a paid advertisement by Greenland Energy Company.

🍋 OF Meets Wall Street

Short Squeez — Tue, 12 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“For any stocks going parabolic, reduce positions almost entirely.” — Michael Burry

Good Morning! OpenAI acquired consulting and engineering firm Tomoro to help deploy AI software across businesses through its new PE-backed joint venture. Blackstone is launching a lending platform for homebuilders to help build 50K US homes per year. And KKR is injecting $300M into FS KKR Capital Corp., the struggling private credit fund it manages with Future Standard.

Wordle is becoming a prime-time TV show with Savannah Guthrie as host. Goldman Sachs says 40% of Americans earning over $300K are still living paycheck to paycheck. And investment bank Lincoln International is seeking $421M in its IPO.

Plus: How a job at OpenAI became the greatest lottery ticket of the AI boom, Fortress co-founder allegedly extorted by sexual partner, and what to do about burnout at work.

Is your firm ahead or behind with their AI implementation? Request access to Endex to get ahead.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

OF Meets Wall Street

OnlyFans has spent years trying to raise outside capital or sell itself. The problem was never the numbers. It was the optics. Investors could see one of the most profitable platforms on the internet, then remember they'd have to explain to their IC why they were buying the world's biggest adult-content marketplace.

Someone finally did it. San Francisco-based PE firm Architect Capital agreed to invest $535 million for a ~16% stake in OnlyFans, valuing it at about $3.15 billion. James Packer (Australian billionaire, former Crown Resorts chairman) and Sam Lessin (early Facebook exec, Slow Ventures co-founder) co-invested alongside Architect, giving the deal extra credibility.

The numbers are absurd. OnlyFans generated $7.2 billion of gross revenue in fiscal 2024, $1.4 billion net, and $684 million of pre-tax profit.

That means the company is valued at less than 5x pre-tax profit, which is the kind of multiple you would expect from a declining industrial business, not a wildly profitable internet platform with global brand recognition and massive creator economics.

The discount exists for a reason. Adult content, creator safety, payments, regulation. It's the kind of asset that makes PE spreadsheets light up and compliance departments develop chest pain. For years, mainstream investors stayed away because the stigma was too hard to underwrite, even if the cash flow was impossible to ignore.

That's what makes this deal interesting. Architect isn't pretending OnlyFans is a normal SaaS business. They're getting in because the valuation is cheap, the profits are huge, and most investors still don't want to be seen near it. That's where PE often finds opportunity: messy assets that throw off real cash and trade at a discount because buyers are uncomfortable.

The ownership backdrop adds another layer. OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky died earlier this year at just 43, and his widow reportedly took control. After years of failed sale efforts, the company finally found a buyer willing to price it for what it is.

Takeaway: OnlyFans is one of the strangest assets in private markets. Massive revenue, huge profits, global brand, valuation that still screams "reputational discount." Architect is betting the moral baggage is already priced in and the cash flow is too good to ignore. Not a clean deal or a comfortable deal. But PE has never been allergic to awkward businesses with fat margins. Sometimes the best returns come from the assets everyone else is too embarrassed to buy.

PRESENTED BY ENDEX

Speculated Gemini 4 Announcement Heats Up Frontier Model Race

Google is rumored to announce Gemini 4 at its upcoming Google I/O 2026 conference next week.

Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI's foundation models are demonstrating unique capabilities across Excel and PowerPoint.

Firms are leveraging AI Excel tools such as Endex to streamline key workflows that used to take bankers hours.

Endex rigorously tests and deploys leading frontier models across thousands of financial tasks, so firms on Wall Street get the best model no matter how the landscape evolves.

Request Access.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

U.S. equities edged higher to begin the week, with the S&P 500 closing at another fresh all-time high
The market is now coming off its sixth consecutive positive week following the sharp rebound from March lows
Economic data was light, with existing-home sales largely in line with expectations
Investors are now focused on this week’s key inflation and consumer-spending data, including CPI tomorrow and retail sales on Thursday
Geopolitical headlines had limited market impact after the U.S. rejected Iran’s latest counterproposal over the weekend
Treasury yields moved modestly higher, with the 10-year yield rising to 4.41%

Inflation Data Takes Center Stage

The April CPI report will be one of the most important macro releases of the month
Consensus expects elevated energy prices to continue pushing headline inflation higher
Core CPI is expected to remain more contained, which will be closely watched by markets and the Fed
Last week’s stronger-than-expected payroll report reinforced the view that the labor market remains stable
The combination of sticky inflation and steady employment conditions likely keeps the Fed in a wait-and-see posture near term
Markets continue to view any additional rate cuts as more likely toward late 2026 if energy pressures ease

Earnings Continue to Dominate the Narrative

Strong earnings growth remains the primary reason equities have been able to largely look through geopolitical uncertainty
More than 84% of S&P 500 companies have beaten earnings expectations this quarter
The magnitude of earnings beats has also been far above historical averages
First-quarter S&P 500 earnings growth is now tracking around 26%, while full-year growth expectations remain above 20%
Continued strength in technology, AI infrastructure, and broader corporate profitability has offset concerns tied to oil prices and geopolitical risk

Movers & Shakers

(+) Lumentum ($LITE) +17% after being added to the Nasdaq-100 Index effective May 18.
(+) Circle ($CRCL) +16% because the Senate’s bipartisan CLARITY Act compromise cleared a key hurdle.
(–) Wendy’s ($WEN) -7% after JPMorgan downgraded to Underweight and BMO cut its price target to $8, with sales down.

Prediction Markets

CPI numbers for April come out around 8:30am EDT.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Architect Capital agreed to invest $535 million into OnlyFans for around a 16% stake
Red Hot Chili Peppers sold their recorded catalog to Warner Music Group for more than $300 million
Cowboy Space, an orbital infrastructure company, raised $275 million
Grand Games, a Turkish mobile gaming studio, raised $70 million
eleQtron, a German trapped ion quantum computing startup, raised around $62 million
Nyobolt, a U.K. developer of fast-charging batteries, raised $60 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Outsmart Everyone

Description:
A tactical playbook inspired by intelligence and espionage techniques, focused on improving awareness, influence, and strategic thinking in everyday life. The book explores how observation, emotional control, information gathering, and behavioral analysis can create an edge in business, negotiations, and personal relationships. It reframes “spy skills” as practical tools for making smarter decisions, reading situations more accurately, and staying ahead in competitive environments.

Book Length: 288 pages
Release Date: September 8, 2026

Ideal For:
Professionals, operators, and anyone interested in strategic thinking, influence, and gaining an edge through sharper awareness and decision-making.

The greatest advantage is not strength or intelligence it is seeing what others miss before they do.

DAILY VISUAL

[ ]

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY FISHER INVESTMENTS

Is Your Retirement Plan Built to Last?

Planning for retirement means preparing for the unexpected: increased cash flow needs, heightened health care costs or a longer life than you might think. One key risk many retirees face is underestimating how long their savings need to last. Another is inflation, which can quietly reduce your purchasing power over time.

The 15-Minute Retirement Plan can help you navigate these challenges. With this guide, you can learn ways to account for a longer time horizon and manage the effects of inflation. If you have $1,000,000 or more saved, download your free guide to start building a more resilient financial future.

DAILY ACUMEN

Conversational Curiosity

The fastest way to be remembered favorably by anyone you meet is to ask them one good follow-up question. Not a polite first question. The second one, that signals you actually listened to the first answer and want to go deeper. Most people are so used to being met with surface-level politeness that genuine curiosity registers as something close to charisma.

The Wall Street version of this is even more pronounced because the default mode in most rooms is performance. Everyone is positioning, signaling, jockeying. The person who quietly listens, then asks the question that goes one layer beneath the surface answer, ends up with information, relationships, and goodwill that the performers never accumulate.

It costs nothing, takes no preparation, and almost nobody does it. Which is exactly why it works.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Why hybrid work feels harder than it should
What to do about burnout at work
How to overcome social anxiety in leadership
How a couple of minutes of meditation can help you when stressed
How to protect your brain against Alzheimer’s

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Latest 6,000% Meme Stock

Short Squeez — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“Diversification is protection against ignorance.” — Warren Buffett

Good Morning! Apollo is emerging as the early winner from the private credit panic. Dunkin' owner Inspire Brands filed confidentially for a US IPO. And e-scooter company Lime filed to go public despite a $59M net loss on $887M in revenue.

Michael Burry says today's market feels like the last months of the 1999-2000 bubble. And Apollo and Blackstone are weighing a $35B financing package for Broadcom.

Plus: How 46 firms accounted for half the wealth generated by the stock market over the past 100 years, PE firms are tapping Europe's junk market for dividends as exits stall, and is protein or fiber more important in your diet?

LLMs are not built to handle financial computations. Mosaic is. Demo their platform today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Latest 6,000% Meme Stock

GameStop-like meme stock energy is back. But this time, it’s an obscure space company competing with SpaceX. AST SpaceMobile (NASDAQ: ASTS), the satellite company trying to beam cell service directly to regular phones from space, has become one of the wildest stocks in the market.

At its peak, shares were up nearly 6,000% over 22 months, turning a forgotten SPAC-era name into a $25 billion company. That makes AST bigger than nearly a third of the S&P 500. And annual revenue is just a paltry $71 million.

The rally is being powered by a 50,000-strong online investor community called the SpaceMob, led by an anonymous hype man known only as the Kook. When the stock sells off, the Kook posts rallying cries on X, the SpaceMob piles in, and the dip becomes what they call a "Kook Bottom."

Members track AST's satellites, monitor parking-lot activity at company facilities, and debate the company's future like they are covering the next Nvidia. It is part due diligence, part cult, part Reddit fever dream, and it looks like it’s working.

To be fair, AST is not a bankrupt mall retailer. The company has real technology, real deals with AT&T, Verizon, and Vodafone, and Alphabet as one of its largest shareholders.

The bull case is that AST becomes critical infrastructure for space-based cellular coverage in markets where traditional towers don't exist. The bear case is that it is fighting SpaceX, Amazon, and gravity itself while trading at a valuation that already assumes it wins.

And rival SpaceX is reportedly preparing for an IPO and has discussed setting aside as much as 30% of shares for retail investors, potentially more than $20 billion in stock orders for individual buyers. Elon Musk already understands retail better than almost anyone on Wall Street, and AST's 6,000% run is proof that the crowd still has enormous firepower when it finds the right story.

The ride is not smooth. AST has already fallen more than 40% from its January peak, still needs to launch dozens more satellites, and has to prove the business model before the dream pricing becomes indefensible.

Takeaway: Meme mania didn't die, and retail is buying a satellite company because it might become the SpaceX of public markets. AST has a shot at something enormous but it also has a $25B valuation, $71M in revenue, and an online mob calling bottoms with surfer memes. That's the modern market in one trade: fundamentals, fandom, and financial insanity, all strapped to the same rocket.

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

An AI Analyst Can Now Turn Your MD’s Comments Into Action

Imagine a world where you can just forward your MD’s email to an analyst and they take care of everything.

Well, that future is here.

On Mosaic’s LBO platform, you can chat with the “AI Analyst” and ask it to update your MD’s comments. Simply tell it what to do, and within 10 seconds, it’ll update your LBO model.

Mosaic is making life easier for hundreds of analysts at firms like New Mountain, CVC, and Warburg.

See it in action today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks reached fresh record highs, with the S&P 500 posting its sixth straight weekly gain
Better-than-expected employment data reinforced confidence in the economy’s resilience
Optimism around a potential Iran peace agreement continued to support sentiment
Technology and semiconductor stocks once again led the market higher
Treasury yields and the U.S. dollar both moved lower as inflation concerns eased modestly

Labor Market Remains a Major Support

April payrolls significantly exceeded expectations, pointing to improving labor-market momentum
The unemployment rate held steady, while hiring broadened across more sectors
Recent labor data now suggests conditions are not just stabilizing, but potentially strengthening
Healthy employment trends should continue supporting household spending despite elevated energy costs
Stronger labor conditions likely keep the Fed on hold for now, with rate cuts pushed toward later in the year

Earnings Continue to Power the Rally

Earnings remain the clearest driver behind equity-market strength
First-quarter S&P 500 profit growth is tracking above 25%, far stronger than expected earlier in the quarter
Technology continues to dominate, supported by strong AI infrastructure and semiconductor demand
High corporate profit margins are helping offset geopolitical uncertainty and elevated oil prices
Broad earnings strength across sectors is reducing dependence on only a few mega-cap winners

Movers & Shakers

(+) Rocket Lab ($RKLB) +34% after posting record Q1 revenue of $200M (+64% YoY) and announcing its largest launch contract ever.
(–) CoreWeave ($CRWV) -11% because Q1 earnings showed an adjusted loss of $1.12/share, wider than the $0.90 expected
(–) Cloudfare ($NET) -24% after announcing it would cut roughly 20% of its workforce as part of an AI-driven restructuring.

Prediction Markets

Strange videos of UFOs have been surfacing of X recently.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Moonshot AI, a Beijing-based AI lab, raised around $2 billion
Ramp, a corporate card and expense management firm, is raising $750 million
Quantum Motion, a silicon-based quantum computing developer, raised $160 million
Cytospire Therapeutics, a developer of immune cell engagers, raised around $83 million
Tessera Labs, an ERP modernization platform, raised $60 million
Kanvas Biosciences, a developer of precision microbiome therapeutics, raised $48 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Never Settle

Description:
A tactical guide from Attia Qureshi and John Richardson on mastering persuasion and negotiation in both business and everyday life. The book focuses on understanding incentives, controlling emotional dynamics, and communicating with clarity under pressure. Through practical frameworks and real-world examples, it teaches how to create leverage, navigate difficult conversations, and secure better outcomes without damaging relationships.

Book Length: 272 pages
Release Date: May 12, 2026

Ideal For:
Professionals, leaders, and anyone looking to improve negotiation, influence, and communication in high-stakes situations.

The people who get the best outcomes are rarely the loudest they are the ones who understand leverage and human behavior best.

DAILY VISUAL

Record High Number of 18-Year-Olds in the US Today

Source: Apollo

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How Does Elon Musk Save Billions on Capital Gains Tax?

Instead of selling his stock and triggering taxable gains, he uses his shares as collateral to secure loans, giving him access to large amounts of cash without selling.

This approach has been used in major moves like financing the Twitter acquisition, where he leveraged Tesla stock for a margin loan rather than cashing out.

It is a strategy many billionaires use: borrowing against appreciating assets to fund spending while deferring or avoiding capital gains taxes.

Now, non-billionaires have access to this strategy through Stelrix, the gold credit card backed by your portfolio.

Request access to the waitlist today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Sleep Trade

Sleeping six hours a night instead of seven and a half does not make you tougher. It makes you cognitively equivalent to someone who is legally drunk, and the data on this is no longer remotely controversial.

Reaction time, judgment, emotional regulation, memory consolidation. All measurably impaired in ways the impaired person almost never notices about themselves.

The cruel part is that the people most likely to underestimate the cost are also the ones whose jobs depend most heavily on the faculties being eroded. You cannot out-discipline biology. You can only choose whether to pay the bill in lost performance now or in compounding health problems later.

The cheapest, most underrated edge available in any high-performance career is a full night of sleep, and almost nobody is taking it.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Is protein or fiber more important?
Why discomfort is the key to leadership
What really controls appetite?
A life hack for the ultra-wealthy is going mainstream
4 stoic rules to master your emotions at work

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋Wall Street Bonus Increases Coming

Short Squeez — Fri, 08 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“The best way to do something 'lean' is to gather a tight group of people, give them very little money, and very little time." — Bob Klein

Good Morning! eBay suspended GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, accusing him of "putting the eBay community at risk" amid his $56B takeover bid. The billionaire widow of OnlyFans founder Leonid Radvinsky has taken control of OnlyFans. And ex-JPM banker Chirayu Rana has hired an attorney who has repped Jeffrey Epstein accusers.

Elon Musk's co-parent says he offered Sam Altman a Tesla board seat around 2017 and 2018 before their OpenAI falling out. Google launched a $100 Fitbit Air to compete with Whoop. And Apple is in late-stage development of AirPods with built-in cameras.

Plus: Most AI systems in trading contests lose money, and what sets successful CEOs apart from the average.

Invest in real assets to hedge inflation. Explore farmland investing with AcreTrader today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Wall Street Bonus Increases Coming

Source: Johnson Associates

Wall Street bonuses are projected to rise for the third year in a row, with M&A and ECM teams expected to see incentive pay jump 10% to 20%+ this year, according to Johnson Associates.

The rebound is being driven by two very Wall Street-friendly forces: volatility and dealmaking. M&A advisory is recovering, equity issuance is heating up, and trading desks have been feasting on market swings across stocks, rates, and commodities.

Alan Johnson, who runs Johnson Associates, summed it up and said “it’s the year of the bank.” He also described it as a “horse race between trading and M&A advisory,” which means both sides of the house are suddenly feeling pretty good.

The bumps are not evenly distributed. M&A and equity bankers are looking at 10% to 20% or more. Equity traders are expected to see 10% to 15%. Fixed income gets a more modest 5% to 10%. Wealth management is up around 5%, helped by inflows and talent competition. Private credit employees may see bonuses flat to up 5%.

This all comes after 2025’s bonus pool already hit a record $49.2 billion, with the average Wall Street bonus rising 6% to $246,900. The difference now is that 2026 is starting to look less like a one-off rebound and more like a full-blown comeback.

Takeaway: Wall Street’s bonus drought is officially fading. M&A is back, equity issuance is alive, trading desks are printing, and the biggest banks just posted their most profitable first quarter ever. The only thing standing between Wall Street and a very happy comp season is the usual cocktail of war, rates, tariffs, and markets doing something stupid right before bonus committees meet. As Johnson put it, “things are surprisingly optimistic again, knock on wood, for now.”

See live compensation and bonus Wall Street 360.

PRESENTED BY ACRETRADER

The Asset Class You Can Walk On

The savvy investor looks for under-explored asset classes. AcreTrader gives you access to one that helps put dinner on your plate: US farmland.

US farmland is worth $3.82 trillion. While past performance is not a guarantee of future results*, it’s generated positive returns every year for the past 30 years, while assets like gold and stocks have fluctuated. And, supply and demand are fundamental drivers for the farmland market: US acreage is shrinking while the global population grows.

AcreTrader gives exposure to this real, tangible asset and provides a way to round out your portfolio with an effective inflation hedge.

Explore farmland investing with AcreTrader and see their new fund here.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks pulled back as investors awaited Iran’s response to a proposed diplomatic framework
Weakness was broad-based, with energy and materials leading declines after oil prices rebounded
Treasury yields moved higher, with the 10-year yield rising to 4.38%
International markets were more constructive, led by another record high in Japan’s Nikkei
The U.S. dollar strengthened modestly as investors turned slightly more defensive

Labor Market Still Stable

Weekly jobless claims rose modestly but remained below expectations
Continuing claims declined, suggesting unemployed workers are still finding jobs relatively quickly
Recent labor data continues to point toward a stable, slower-growth employment backdrop rather than deterioration
Wage growth likely remains modestly above inflation, helping support consumer spending
Today’s payroll report will be key, with expectations centered around moderate job growth and a steady unemployment rate

Earnings Remain the Core Bullish Driver

Earnings season continues to exceed expectations in a major way
With most companies reported, S&P 500 earnings growth estimates have surged far above where they started the quarter
Technology remains the standout, driven by AI and cloud infrastructure demand
Communication services and materials are also posting exceptionally strong growth
Importantly, earnings strength is broadening beyond just a handful of mega-cap names, helping improve overall market breadth and diversification

Movers & Shakers

(+) Datadog ($DDOG) +10% after crushing Q1 estimates and raising full-year revenue guidance to $4.32B from $4.08B.
(+) Shake Shack ($SHAK) -28% because Q1 earnings and revenue at the fast casual chain both missed estimates.
(–) Planet Fitness ($PLNT) -31% after net new member adds declined 36% year-over-year during peak sign-up season.

Prediction Markets

With oil prices currently at $101, traders are predicting a large uptick to end the week.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Angelini Pharma agreed to acquire Catalyst Pharma, a rare disease biotech, for around $4.1 billion
Roche agreed to acquire PathAI, a digital pathology company, for $1.05 billion
Kalshi, a predictions marketplace, raised $1 billion
Anagram Therapeutics, a biotech focused on pancreatic insufficiency, raised $250 million
Corgi, an insurer for startups, raised $160 million
RadixArk, a startup seeking to make AI inference and training more efficient, raised $100 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Risk & Reward

Description:
A practical investing guide from Ben Carlson on navigating uncertainty while staying focused on long-term wealth creation. The book explains how volatility is not something to fear but something to understand and manage. Through clear examples and behavioral insights, it shows how disciplined investing, patience, and realistic expectations can outperform emotional decision-making over time.

Book Length: 240 pages
Release Date: May 12, 2026

Ideal For:
Investors looking to better understand market volatility, improve emotional discipline, and build sustainable long-term wealth.

The biggest investing advantage is not predicting the future it is staying disciplined when uncertainty rises.

DAILY VISUAL

Excel and Jevons Paradox

Source: Apollo

PRESENTED BY DALOOPA

Supercharge Your AI Tools with Daloopa

High-quality data has become more critical than ever as investment firms build AI-powered financial workflows.

Daloopa solves this challenge by delivering the most comprehensive and accurate fundamental dataset, spanning thousands of KPIs for 5,500+ tickers globally. Each data point is also linked to its original source for full traceability.

Companies like Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Perplexity have chosen Daloopa for financial data connectors to enhance their users’ investment research workflows.

Daloopa’s LLM-agnostic MCP can easily plug and play with your AI tool of choice, providing a reliable data layer for inflection tracking, benchmarking, due diligence and more.

Check it out today to see how investors are accelerating their decision making with Daloopa.

DAILY ACUMEN

Exercise Snacks

A two-minute set of bodyweight exercises performed two or three times during a workday, what physiologists call exercise snacks, has been shown to produce metabolic and cardiovascular improvements comparable to formal workouts.

The mechanism is simple. The body does not particularly care whether your activity comes in one block or several. It just cares that it happens.

The implication for anyone whose calendar destroys any hope of a real gym routine is significant.

You do not need an hour you do not have. You need two minutes, repeated, embedded in the day. A flight of stairs taken fast. A set of squats between meetings. A short walk after lunch.

The barrier to consistent exercise is almost never time. It is the belief that anything less than the full workout is not worth doing.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Build 3 statement models, DCFs and LBOs in 10 minutes**
Why you should add eggs to your protein rotation
What sets successful CEOs apart from the average
I’ve used venture capital, now I’ve found a better way to build a company
The emotional security secret
9 entrepreneurs on how to turn a side hustle into a business

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

*Investments in private placements are illiquid, speculative, and may result in the complete loss of capital. Securities offered through NCPS, member FINRA/SIPC.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. The 9.4% historical return and 5.2% standard deviation cited are based on the USDA Cropland index, a composite measure of a large pool of properties used as a proxy for the broader market; they do not represent the results of any actual investment or specific AcreTrader offering. These returns do not include management fees, transaction costs, or expenses. Sources: USDA Cropland Returns Statistical Report (2025), St. Louis Fed.

**Partner sponsored post.

🍋 $50K Wall Street Internship Coach

Short Squeez — Thu, 07 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

"What the mayor of New York has made clear to us, is that we need to double down on Miami." — Ken Griffin

Good Morning! JPM sex scandal accuser Chirayu Rana reportedly turned down a $1 million settlement offer from the firm, countering with $11.75 million. Anthropic and SpaceX announced a compute deal that includes space development. And Apollo CEO Marc Rowan warned of a 30-35% chance of a market correction while slamming "egregious" practices at rival insurers.

JPMorgan rolled out an index tracking 6,400 private midsize US companies with $1T in combined annual revenue. TPG co-founder's daughter Samantha Holloway tapped JPMorgan and Moelis to land an NBA expansion team in Seattle. And Wall Street is gearing up for a wave of data center IPOs as AI-linked debuts surge.

Plus: Morgan Stanley launched crypto trading and is undercutting rivals on price, and is your Zone 2 workout doing more harm than good?

Firms have found a trusted solution to automate 80% of their grunt work with Blueflame AI. Explore how it can do it for your firm today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

$50K Wall Street Internship Coach

The wealthy parents who spent years paying SAT tutors, college consultants, and essay coaches to get their kids into a good school are now discovering that getting them out, with an actual job, requires a whole separate budget.

Career coaching for college students has quietly become one of the fastest-growing niches in an industry best known for helping burned-out 40-somethings find their purpose. One coach charges $750,000 to get kids into Harvard, and another $50,000 to get them a job after.

Packages run $3,000 to $10,000 at the low end. Firms targeting Wall Street placements charge $30,000 to the high five figures for networking support, technical interview prep, campus club guidance, and help managing the 40-plus applications a student submits for IB roles alone.

IB analysts clear $170,000 (according to Wall Street 360 data), so the ROI math works if it works. But that's a lot of tuition money to bet on a brutally competitive recruiting cycle, and parents who just wrote a $65,000 check for a year of college aren't inclined to leave the next step to chance.

The coaching itself isn't magic. College career centers offer most of the same services, and plenty of coaches will tell you that quietly. But the demand is real, and the anxiety driving it is realer. One LA lawyer hired a career coach for his 16-year-old to figure out what to major in, before the family even started working with an admissions consultant.

Private coaching has gone from serving 5% of the career coach industry in 2019 to more than 25% today.

Takeaway: This is what happens when the job market gets hostile enough and college expensive enough that parents start treating a first job like an ROI calculation rather than a rite of passage. The dirty secret of Wall Street recruiting is that it has always rewarded access, polish, and preparation that not everyone can afford. These firms are just making the price tag explicit. Whether that's an honest market or a depressing one probably depends on which side of the $50,000 check you're on.

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

Wall Street’s New Assistant Doesn’t Sleep

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks rallied sharply, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq closing at fresh all-time highs
Optimism was driven by reports that a U.S.–Iran peace deal could be near
Oil prices fell sharply, easing inflation concerns and supporting risk appetite
Treasury yields moved lower as bond markets reacted to declining energy pressure
Global equities also advanced, with Europe and several Asian markets higher

Earnings Momentum

Earnings remain the biggest support underneath the market
With most companies reported, S&P 500 earnings growth is tracking far above expectations
Strength is being led by technology and communication services, powered by AI-related investment
The market is increasingly rewarding profit growth and execution, not just geopolitical relief
Strong earnings are helping justify record highs despite lingering uncertainty

Economic Backdrop

Recent data continues to show a resilient U.S. economy
Q1 GDP rebounded, with underlying private-sector demand still healthy
Consumer spending has cooled slightly, but remains supported by income growth and tax refunds
Business investment remains a standout, especially in IT, software, and AI infrastructure
Higher oil prices remain a risk, but there is little evidence of broad economic deterioration

Movers & Shakers

(+) Advanced Micro Devices ($AMD) +10% after crushing Q1 estimates with data center revenue up 57% year-over-year.
(+) Uber ($UBER) +9% because Q1 adjusted EBITDA grew 33% to $2.5B and the company guided Q2 gross bookings above the $56.17B consensus.
(–) SolarEdge Technologies ($SEDG) -9% after reporting a wider-than-expected Q1 adjusted loss and issuing cautious guidance.

Prediction Markets

What will rate cuts look like through the rest of the year with the new Fed Chair?
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Astranis, a commercial satellite company, raised $450 million
Iceye, a Finnish satellite startup, is in talks to raise around $270 million
CellCentric, a U.K. biotech focused on multiple myeloma, raised $220 million
Blitzy, an autonomous software development firm, raised $200 million
QuantWare, a Dutch quantum processor startup, raised around $178 million
Enter, a Brazilian legal tech startup, raised $100 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Take It Personal

Description:
A relationship-first approach to success from David Grutman, centered on the idea that long-term wins come from how you treat people, not just what you achieve. The book breaks down how trust, reputation, and consistency compound over time, especially in competitive industries. It emphasizes playing the long game, showing up with intention, and building genuine connections that create opportunities money alone cannot buy.

Book Length: 256 pages
Release Date: April 14, 2026

Ideal For:
Entrepreneurs, operators, and professionals who want to build lasting success through relationships, reputation, and long-term thinking.

A reminder that hard work, discipline, and heart always win.

DAILY VISUAL

Beers Are Back

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

Mosaic Raises Series A

Mosaic just raised an $18M Series A led by Radical Ventures to scale its AI-driven deal modeling platform.

Instead of LLMs that guess their way through math, Mosaic uses deterministic, rules-based logic to spit out MD-ready LBOs and DCFs in minutes, fully auditable and exportable to Excel.

Five of the top 10 global PE firms and a number of bulge-bracket banks are already using Mosaic including Warburg Pincus, Bridgepoint, CVC, New Mountain, and Evercore.

Read the press release here and book a demo here.

DAILY ACUMEN

Decision Fatigue

The reason your judgment is sharp at 9am and garbage by 4pm is not effort, it is biology. Every decision you make in a day, no matter how small, draws from the same finite pool of cognitive resources. By late afternoon, that pool is empty, and the brain starts taking shortcuts. Easier yes. Lazier analysis. Default to whatever was suggested last.

The implication for anyone making real money decisions is enormous. Every meaningful trade, hire, or commitment made after lunch is being made by a measurably worse version of you. The fix is not more discipline. It is structural. Front-load the day with the decisions that actually matter, and protect that window like it determines your career, because it largely does.

The most successful people in any field have figured out that willpower is a renewable but finite resource, and they organize their entire life around when it is full.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How to make your exercise routine work for you
Stop saying ‘how was your weekend’
Is your Zone 2 obsession making you less capable?
Why we should award undergraduate law degrees
How to rewire your brain through self-awareness

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Ken Doubles Down on Miami

Short Squeez — Wed, 06 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“Never confuse debt for creativity.” — Michael Burry (on GameStop proposing to buy eBay)

Good Morning! Apollo raised $6.5 billion for the third iteration of its hybrid debt-equity fund. OpenAI finalized a $10 billion joint venture with PE firms to deploy AI. And Anthropic unveiled AI agents built for financial services tasks such as drafting decks and reviewing financial statements.

Wall Street is increasingly handing corporate bond trades to bots, with around 35% of block trades worth $5 million or more now handled electronically. Morgan Stanley's Budapest investment banking program was hit by a FINRA probe over unlicensed junior bankers in Hungary working on US and European deals. And KKR logged a faster pace of deal exits as earnings topped estimates.

Plus: The SEC unveiled a proposal to allow semiannual reporting, James Murdoch is in talks to buy Vox's New York magazine and podcast division, and how to improve your VO2 max without running for hours.

Create your unfair edge against the late-night grind. Try FRE today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Ken Doubles Down on Miami

Ken Griffin was already moving Citadel’s center of gravity to Miami. But now, he says he’s making the office taller.

Speaking yesterday at the Milken Institute conference, Griffin said Citadel has revised plans for its Miami headquarters to make the tower larger, and he tied the decision directly to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent video promoting a pied-à-terre tax. In the video, Mamdani name-checked Griffin and his $238 million Manhattan penthouse. Griffin said he has watched the clip three times and called it “creepy and weird,” which is not exactly the love language of a billionaire currently weighing how much office space to keep in New York.

The key quote was not just that Griffin disliked the video. It was that the episode reminded him of “the trauma I went through in Chicago,” where he previously moved Citadel’s headquarters out after repeatedly criticizing the city’s leadership. So Griffin has seen this movie before, and he does not plan to stay for the sequel. When one of the most powerful people in global finance says a city’s politics are starting to feel like the last city he left, commercial real estate people tend to stop scrolling.

That is what makes the Miami comment matter. Griffin did not just complain about New York politics. He said Citadel’s internal debate over Miami versus New York has effectively been settled. “It’s unquestionably true that we made the right choice,” he said. The firm’s Miami tower was already going to be a statement. Now it sounds like the statement is getting more floors.

The unresolved piece is 350 Park Avenue, Citadel’s planned $6 billion Manhattan tower. Griffin did not say he is walking away, but he also did not give New York a full vote of confidence. “What we do at 350 is still a point of discussion internally,” he said. Citadel still has roughly 2,500 employees in New York. But the direction of travel is hard to miss: Miami just got bigger, and Manhattan just got more complicated.

Takeaway: Mamdani tried to make Ken Griffin the poster child for taxing ultra-wealthy pied-à-terre owners. Griffin responded by telling the Milken crowd that the video was “creepy and weird,” that it validated Citadel’s Miami move, and that the firm has revised its Miami tower plans upward. Maybe 350 Park still happens. Maybe this is partly negotiation theater. But the optics are brutal for New York.

PRESENTED BY FRE

For When That Late Night Wall Hits

Bloomberg reported last year that nicotine pouches have quietly become the performance-enhancing tool of choice in finance, described by one source as “ubiquitous with juniors in the industry.”

Researchers have studied nicotine’s effects on attention and reaction time for decades, and the office-worker set has caught on.

For analysts and bankers running on four hours of sleep and a 40-slide deck still left to build, FRE offers a tobacco-free pouch in five strengths up to 15mg.

Give FRE a try today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks moved higher as Middle East tensions cooled and oil prices eased
Gains were broad-based, with all 11 S&P 500 sectors finishing higher
Technology and materials led, signaling a stronger risk-on tone
Bond yields edged lower, offering some relief after Monday’s selloff
Markets are still sensitive to Iran headlines, but today’s tone was more constructive

Earnings and Growth Still Leading

Earnings season remains a major support for markets
Results have been much stronger than expected, with S&P 500 earnings growth now tracking well above initial forecasts
Strength is being driven by AI-related investment, especially across technology and communication services
Economic data still points to steady growth rather than slowdown
Labor demand appears stable, with job openings little changed and services activity still expanding

Geopolitics Still Matter

Monday’s military action raised concerns that the ceasefire could break down
Today’s rebound suggests markets are reassured by the lack of further escalation
Oil moving lower helped ease inflation and policy concerns
Both sides appear to still prefer a diplomatic path, at least for now
The conflict remains a risk, but not enough to overwhelm strong earnings and growth trends today

Movers & Shakers

(+) Intel ($INTC) +13% after Bloomberg reported Apple held early-stage talks with Intel about manufacturing its main processors in the U.S.
(+) Pinterest ($PINS) +7% because the social media company beat Q1 estimates on revenue and issued an upbeat outlook.
(–) Palantir ($PLTR) -7% after a downgrade by Jefferies, thanks to slowing growth.

Prediction Markets

Watch Wednesday: Rolex GMT-Master II with red and black Bezel
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Bullish agreed to acquire Equiniti, a transfer agent, for $4.25 billion
Sierra, a provider of custom AI agents for enterprise customer service, raised $950 million
IREN agreed to acquire Mirantis, a provider of cloud infrastructure services, for $625 million
Windward Bio, a Swiss immune biotech, raised $165 million
Panthalassa, a developer of tidal-powered data centers, raised $140 million
Reserv, a property and casualty insuretech, raised $125 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Steve Jobs in Exile

Description:
A revealing look at Steve Jobs during his years away from Apple Inc., written by Geoffrey Cain. The book dives into the creation of NeXT and how this period of failure, experimentation, and reinvention ultimately reshaped Jobs into the leader who would later transform Apple. It highlights how setbacks, when approached with vision and persistence, can become the foundation for future breakthroughs.

Book Length: 304 pages
Release Date: May 19, 2026

Ideal For:
Founders, operators, and anyone interested in how failure, reinvention, and long-term thinking can lead to transformative success.

The moments that look like failure are often the ones that quietly build the foundation for everything that follows.

DAILY VISUAL

What the Zuck

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How Does Elon Musk Save Billions on Capital Gains Tax?

Instead of selling his stock and triggering taxable gains, he uses his shares as collateral to secure loans, giving him access to large amounts of cash without selling.

This approach has been used in major moves like financing the Twitter acquisition, where he leveraged Tesla stock for a margin loan rather than cashing out.

It is a strategy many billionaires use: borrowing against appreciating assets to fund spending while deferring or avoiding capital gains taxes.

Now, non-billionaires have access to this strategy through Stelrix, the gold credit card backed by your portfolio.

Request access to the waitlist today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Liquidity Premium

There is a reason private markets pay more than public ones, and the reason is that you cannot get out. The same logic applies to almost every meaningful decision in your life, and almost nobody applies it. You are paid a premium, in returns and in growth, for committing to things you cannot easily exit. Relationships. Reputations. Long-dated bets on people, geographies, careers.

Most people are trying to live their lives in the public markets. Maximum optionality, instant liquidity, ability to pivot at any moment. And they wonder why everything in their life feels like it is trading at fair value with no upside left.

The illiquid version of you is the one that compounds. The liquid version is the one that stays comfortable and never quite breaks out.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How daily sharpness dictates productivity
Why high achievers can feel lost after success
How highly successful people talk to others at work
Just 2 minutes a day of this type of exercise can help you live longer
How to improve your VO2 max without running for hours

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Anthropic Hires Private Equity

Short Squeez — Tue, 05 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

"If you do something really well, the entire world beats a path to your door.” — Lloyd Blankfein

Good Morning! GameStop made a $56 billion takeover offer for eBay, with CEO Ryan Cohen pitching a vision to turn the platform into an Amazon competitor, but the company’s inability to explain how it would actually pay for the deal spooked investors. Michael Burry agreed, dumping all his GameStop stock shortly after.

Palantir topped estimates with 85% revenue growth, its fastest since its 2020 debut. Peter Thiel is backing Panthalassa, a $1B startup building wave-powered ocean data centers.

Carlyle seeded a buyout fund with $5B in a novel credit deal. Blackstone's data center REIT is targeting a $1.75B IPO, with its CEO predicting a boom in blue-collar jobs.

Plus: Hair loss is booming as a GLP-1 side effect, a former Chick-fil-A employee was charged in an $80,000 mac-and-cheese scheme, and Silicon Valley is bracing for a permanent underclass.

With the help of Endex, LLMs are reaching scale in finance. Consider them for your firm today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Anthropic Hires Private Equity

Anthropic is no longer just selling AI tools; it is building a Wall Street-backed distribution machine.

The company is launching a new $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, Apollo, General Atlantic, Leonard Green, GIC, and Sequoia to help companies adopt Anthropic’s AI tools. Anthropic, Blackstone, and H&F are each expected to invest roughly $300 million, while Goldman is putting in around $150 million.

The pitch is simple: create a consulting arm for Claude, then use private equity’s portfolio-company universe as the customer base.

That is the genius of the deal. Private equity firms already own thousands of companies obsessed with margin improvement, cost reduction, and operational efficiency. And Anthropic now gets direct access to that ecosystem through the firms that control the boardrooms.

Instead of selling Claude one enterprise procurement cycle at a time, Anthropic is plugging into Blackstone, H&F, Apollo, General Atlantic, and Leonard Green’s corporate networks. It is AI distribution by cap table.

And while OpenAI has reportedly been exploring a rival JV with private equity firms, Anthropic has gained ground in enterprise and coding thanks to Claude Code. Both companies know the next phase of the AI war is not just consumer chatbots or benchmark flexing. It is embedding AI into the daily workflows of actual businesses: customer service, coding, finance, legal, HR, procurement, operations, and every other department with a spreadsheet and too many people doing manual work.

For Wall Street, this is also a new kind of AI trade. Blackstone and H&F are not just buying shares and waiting for an IPO; they are helping build the sales channel. Goldman is not just advising on the transaction. It is investing in the infrastructure around enterprise AI adoption. PE firms get a playbook to push AI across portfolio companies. Anthropic gets revenue growth, strategic credibility, and a stronger IPO story.

Takeaway: Anthropic just turned private equity into its enterprise sales force. The company gets access to thousands of portfolio companies that are already under pressure to cut costs, raise margins, and show AI adoption. Wall Street gets a front-row seat in the enterprise AI land grab. And corporate America gets a very clear message: Claude is coming for your workflows, probably through a board presentation from Blackstone.

PRESENTED BY ENDEX

Frontier LLMs Reach a Context Inflection Point for Finance

Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 both now process a million tokens of context in a single prompt. A private equity team can evaluate an entire VDR in one window.

Expanding context lets AI agents complete end-to-end work for finance teams. Top Wall Street firms use Endex for complex modeling in Excel. Their custom deployments compress hours of analyst work into minutes, deploying agents in each firm's workflows and with their formatting standards.

Get access to Endex.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks fell as Middle East tensions flared and oil prices moved higher
The Dow declined more than 1%, while relative strength in tech helped cushion losses in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq
WTI crude rose to about $105, reflecting renewed concern around energy supply disruptions
Bonds sold off sharply, with the 2-year Treasury yield rising near 3.95%
Markets are now pricing little chance of Fed rate cuts this year, as oil-driven inflation risks return

Geopolitics Back in Control

The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire as the U.S. attempted to establish passage through the Strait of Hormuz
Separate Iranian missile strikes on the U.A.E. added to concerns around broader regional escalation
Iran’s latest peace proposal was quickly rejected, highlighting how far apart both sides remain
While today’s action was described as defensive, it raises doubts about whether the ceasefire can hold
Markets are refocusing on the risk of a longer and more disruptive energy shock

Fundamentals Still Provide Support

Despite renewed volatility, the broader economic backdrop remains resilient so far
Recent GDP data showed solid underlying growth, supported by consumer spending and business investment
The labor market remains stable, with this week’s jobs report expected to show continued moderate hiring
Earnings trends also remain constructive as the final wave of Q1 reports comes through
The key risk is whether elevated oil prices begin to weigh more heavily on inflation, margins, and consumer demand

Movers & Shakers

(+) Circle ($CRCL) +20% after the Senate’s GENIUS Act stablecoin bill cleared a key procedural vote, removing a major regulatory overhang for USDC issuers.
(–) GameStop ($GME) -10% because CEO Ryan Cohen publicly proposed a $55.5B cash-and-stock bid to acquire eBay, a deal five times GameStop’s own market cap.
(–) UPS ($UPS) -10% after Amazon launched “Amazon Supply Chain Services,” opening its logistics network to third-party businesses.

Prediction Markets

This lawsuit has huge implications for the future of AI.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Standard Intelligence, a model that trains on video rather than text, raised $75 million
CMBlu Energy, a German maker of long-duration batteries, raised around $54 million
Vivacta Bio, a Chinese developer of CAR-T cell therapies, raised $50 million
Critical Loop, an on-site power provider for industry, raised $26 million
Neato, a second-party e-commerce accelerator, raised $25 million
Sonire Therapeutics, a developer of ultrasound devices for treating pancreatic cancer, raised $18 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

HEARD ON THE STREET

Which Bulge Bracket has the Best Mental Health?

Now you can find out. We just rolled out mental & physical health league tables on Wall Street 360, the first time the Street has ranked firms head-to-head on culture, not just comp.

Filter by:

Bulge Brackets
Elite Boutiques
Middle Market
Private Equity
Country, city, or industry

The results are eye-opening. Some firms with the loudest reputations rank middle of the pack. Others you wouldn't expect are quietly outperforming. And a few elite boutiques are putting some bulge brackets to shame.

See where your firm stacks up.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Elon Take The Wheel

Description:
A critical and investigative look from Edward Niedermeyer at the promises and realities behind Tesla’s self-driving ambitions. The book examines the gap between marketing and technology, highlighting safety concerns, regulatory challenges, and the broader implications of deploying autonomous systems at scale. It offers a skeptical lens on innovation, emphasizing the importance of accountability, transparency, and rigorous testing in high-stakes technologies.

Book Length: 320 pages
Release Date: December 1, 2026

Ideal For:
Readers interested in technology, autonomous vehicles, and the risks and realities behind cutting-edge innovation.

Innovation without accountability can create as much risk as it does progress.

DAILY VISUAL

MAMA, I just spent $700 billion

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY ACRETRADER

The Asset Class You Can Walk On

The savvy investor looks for under-explored asset classes. AcreTrader gives you access to one that helps put dinner on your plate: US farmland.

DAILY ACUMEN

Carry Trade

Every job in finance has a carry. Not the financial kind. The personal one. The thing the role gives you on top of the comp, paid in optionality, network, signal, or skill. Most people focus obsessively on the cash component and ignore the carry, which is usually where the real long-term value lives.

A two-year stint at the right firm can compound into opportunities that the salary alone could never buy. A higher-paying job at the wrong firm can quietly cost you ten years of optionality you did not know you were trading away. The math on these trades is almost never run honestly because the immediate number is so much easier to see than the trajectory.

Comp is what they pay you. Carry is what the seat is actually worth. Confusing the two is one of the most expensive mistakes a young person on the Street can make.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Why are you so tired all the time
Why don’t we remember being babies?
The high cost of living with the ultra-rich
Advice on building a rewarding work life
Are you exercising at the right time of day?

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

*Investments in private placements are illiquid, speculative, and may result in the complete loss of capital. Securities offered through NCPS, member FINRA/SIPC.

🍋 Jane Street’s Printing Money

Short Squeez — Mon, 04 May 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“Wealth isn't a distinction. If I have no other achievement to my credit than the accumulation of wealth, then I have made a poor success of my life.” — John Rockefeller

Good Morning! GameStop is preparing a bid for eBay as Ryan Cohen pushes to turn the retailer into a $100B juggernaut. Pickleball Inc. raised a record $225M from Apollo and Dundon. Spirit Airlines shut down after its government rescue fizzled.

KKR secured over $10B to launch an AI infrastructure company. Apple rose on strong iPhone and China sales in Q2. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund raised $6B for later-stage bets, its largest haul ever.

Plus: Ares and JPMorgan inked an $800M private credit deal for GoodLife, McKinsey will use AI agents to pick client teams, and SoftBank-backed OPay tapped Citi, Deutsche, and JPM for a US IPO.

See how your net worth stacks up against your peers. Download the Coverd app today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Jane Street’s Printing Money

Jane Street just put up a crazy year that blew the rest of Wall Street out of the water. The secretive trading giant generated $39.6 billion in trading revenue last year, more than the biggest banks and well ahead of market-making peers.

On a per-employee basis, that works out to roughly $11 million of revenue per person across just 3,500 employees, and about $9 million of profit per employee, which is genuinely unheard of in finance.

For context, JPMorgan generated $35.8 billion in trading revenue with 316,000 employees. Jane Street beat them with about 1% of the headcount. So Jane Street is basically running finance's most profitable math club.

And the employees got paid like it. Jane Street handed out $9.38 billion in compensation, more than double the prior year. That works out to about $2.68 million per employee on average, almost seven times Goldman Sachs' average payout. Obviously, not everyone is taking home that number and comp is likely top-heavy. But even as an average, it is one of the wildest comp stats on the Street.

The bigger story is how Jane Street became a juggernaut. The firm started in 2000 trading ADRs, expanded into ETFs, and then rode the electronification of basically every asset class from stocks, bonds, ETFs, crypto, startups, and AI. The firm now has $45 billion of members’ equity, up nearly 2,000% since 2016, giving it an enormous internal capital base to trade with. That firepower lets Jane Street move fast, take risk, and capitalize on market volatility without leaning on outside capital the way banks do.

It also helps that Jane Street is not burdened by the same regulatory framework as the big bank trading desks. JPMorgan, Goldman, and Morgan Stanley have balance sheets wrapped in capital rules and regulatory handcuffs. Jane Street has math PhDs, puzzle nerds, partner capital, and a very large appetite for profitable chaos. That is a pretty good setup when markets are volatile, and liquidity is valuable.

The firm has also turned into a quiet AI power player. Jane Street has scored big on Anthropic, invested another $1 billion into CoreWeave, and is reportedly in funding talks with cloud-computing startup Fluidstack. So this is not just a market-making firm clipping spreads anymore. It is a trading empire with a venture book, an AI angle, and more capital than most hedge funds could dream of.

Takeaway: Jane Street is moving different right now. Its numbers aren't normal. That is a money-printing machine with better engineers than most tech companies and fewer regulatory headaches than the banks. Goldman still has the brand. JPMorgan still has the fortress balance sheet. But Jane Street may have the best business model in finance right now.

PRESENTED BY COVERD

Are You Rich?

It’s a question people ponder but don’t typically have a tangible answer for.

Coverd gives you one.

It breaks down all of your spending, estimates your net worth, and shows how you stack up against your peers. The best part? It does this while also offering the ability to win-back past purchases by playing mini games like flappy bird or blackjack. It’s like if Rocket Money, Robinhood, and your favorite gaming app had a baby.

The Coverd credit card (anticipated to launch by the end of Q2) is the first to ever offer up to 100% cash back on every purchase. Users of the Coverd Card will be able to play in-app games using their points.

Until then, you can start seeing your money clearly now.

Check your net worth today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks pushed to fresh record highs, extending April’s powerful rally
Tech continued to lead, lifting the Nasdaq ahead of the broader market
Oil pulled back on renewed peace talk optimism, though still elevated above $100
Bond yields held steady, signaling no major shift in rate expectations
The dollar continued to weaken, reversing its safe-haven surge from March

Geopolitics: Progress, But Not Resolution

A ceasefire remains in place, but lasting peace still feels out of reach
New proposals are circulating, yet both sides appear far apart on key terms
Markets are reacting to headlines, but are starting to demand real progress
Oil is the clearest barometer here, still pricing in ongoing supply risk
Without a breakthrough, energy volatility could quickly return

Macro Backdrop: Quietly Resilient

The economy continues to absorb higher energy prices better than expected
Earnings have come in strong, reinforcing the fundamental case for equities
Labor market data next week becomes key for confirming economic durability
Sentiment data will help answer whether confidence is catching up to markets
So far, the story is simple: growth is bending, not breaking

What’s Driving This Market

The rally is no longer just relief, it is being validated by earnings strength
Investors are increasingly betting on normalization, not escalation
Markets are looking past near-term noise and anchoring on forward earnings power
Oil remains the swing factor, but its influence is being absorbed, not amplified

Movers & Shakers

(+) Atlassian ($TEAM) +30% after beating Q3 estimates and raising its full-year revenue growth outlook.
(+) Reddit ($RDDT) +13% because Q1 results crushed expectations on advertising revenue growth; thanks to AI-powered lower-funnel ad products.
(–) Spirit Airlines ($FLYYQ) -25% after the airline's $500M emergency rescue package collapsed.

Prediction Markets

New to Kalshi: Company KPIs
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Iterative Health, a clinical trial infrastructure startup, raised $77 million
KymaThera, a precision therapeutics startup, is raising $75 million
Fun, a payments platform, raised $72 million
Manifest OS raised $60 million
OpenLight, a silicon photonics startup, raised $50 million
Versana, a loan market infrastructure company, raised $43 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

HEARD ON THE STREET

Which Bulge Bracket has the Best Culture?

Now you can find out. We just rolled out culture league tables on Wall Street 360, the first time the Street has ranked firms head-to-head on culture, not just comp.

Filter by:

Bulge Brackets
Elite Boutiques
Middle Market
Private Equity
Country, city, or industry

See where your firm stacks up.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Law of the Sublime

Description:
A philosophical and strategic exploration from Robert Greene on how to transcend the ordinary and operate at a higher level of mastery, creativity, and influence. The book examines what separates those who achieve true greatness from those who remain average, focusing on discipline, self-awareness, and the pursuit of something larger than immediate success. It blends historical examples with modern insight to create a framework for elevating both thinking and execution.

Book Length: 320 pages
Release Date: November 10, 2026

Ideal For:
Ambitious individuals looking to break out of mediocrity, think more expansively, and pursue mastery, influence, and long-term greatness.

Greatness is not achieved by following the path it is found by rising above it.

DAILY VISUAL

Cheaper Booking Created More Demand for Humans

Source: Apollo

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

Wall Street’s New Assistant Doesn’t Sleep

DAILY ACUMEN

Honest Mirror

There is a specific kind of friend who will tell you the truth even when it costs them your approval, and most people have either one of these or none. The shortage is not random.

Honest feedback is socially expensive to deliver, often unwelcome to receive, and almost never produces an immediate thank you. So most relationships quietly settle into a comfortable arrangement where neither person says the hard thing, and both pretend not to notice.

The cost of this arrangement is invisible until it isn't. By the time the consequences arrive, you have usually been operating with bad information for years, surrounded by people who watched you head in the wrong direction without ever quite saying so.

If everyone around you only tells you what you want to hear, the problem is not them. It is the environment you have built.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How to improve your grip strength
Workers who do a Sunday reset may make $25k more/year
Why the next decade of private equity could be in the lower middle market
10 key differences between the working class vs. the self-made wealthy
The must-have item in Silicon Valley is a $178 sweater

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Wall Street's Wildest 24 Hours

Short Squeez — Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Together With

“I sought good judgment mostly by collecting instances of bad judgment, then pondering ways to avoid such outcomes.” — Charlie Munger

Good Morning! Steve Cohen relinquished his president title at Point72. AI investment helped GDP grow at a 2% rate in the first quarter. And Nvidia plunged almost 5% as investors weigh rising competition from Google and Amazon.

Lazard acquired private capital advisory group Campbell Lutyens in a $575 million deal. Hershey says GLP-1 drugs are driving higher gum and mint sales due to "Ozempic breath" tailwinds. And Thoma Bravo refused to inject fresh cash into ailing Medallia.

Plus: Jobless claims plummeted to their lowest level in decades, and 5 ways to take breaks at work.

The mechanism that the wealthy have used for centuries is now available in a card. Request access to Stelrix today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Wall Street's Wildest 24 Hours

Yesterday X (formerly Twitter) went into meltdown over the most lurid Wall Street lawsuit in recent memory.

The story: a married junior banker, filing as "John Doe," sued JPMorgan and one of its leveraged finance executive directors, Lorna Hajdini, 37, accusing her of turning him into her "sex slave."

The complaint was a tabloid editor's dream, allegations of Rohypnol, Viagra, racial slurs, unauthorized access to his bank account, threats to tank his bonus if he didn't comply, and even a claim that Hajdini turned up at his apartment unannounced to force him into sex. The Daily Mail ran with it. So did everyone else.

Then a few hours later, the court document was quietly withdrawn for "corrections."
And late evening yesterday, the NYPost unmasked Doe.

Enter Chirayu Rana, 35, (pictured above) now a principal at Bregal Sagemount, formerly of Houlihan, Credit Suisse, TCG, Morgan Stanley, Carlyle, and finally JPMorgan. Bregal has removed his profile since and it's not clear if he's still employed there.

JPMorgan said its internal investigation found "no merit" to the claims, citing phone and email records, and noted Rana "refused to participate" in the probe. The bank also pointed out a small but devastating detail: Hajdini wasn't even Rana's manager. They were peers on the leveraged finance team, reporting to two different MDs. She had no sway over his bonus.

Hajdini's camp called it "a complete fabrication." Her statement: she's never been to the apartment where the assault allegedly happened. Sources say Rana filed an internal complaint in May 2025 and tried to negotiate a "millions"-dollar exit package before suing.

Court filings in the U.S. enjoy absolute privilege against defamation claims. Which means every outlet that ran the lurid details is legally bulletproof, even if it all turns out to be invented. Her name is now permanently attached to "JPMorgan sex slave" in Google's eyes.

Takeaway: Wall Street has a long history of harassment claims being dismissed or buried, and that history is exactly why every accusation deserves to be taken seriously on first read. But it's also why this case, if Hajdini's account holds up, could be uniquely destructive: a fabricated complaint that weaponizes the very system designed to protect real victims. Either way, somebody's career just ended. The only question is whose.

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How Does Elon Musk Save Billions on Capital Gains Tax?

Instead of selling his stock and triggering taxable gains, he uses his shares as collateral to secure loans, giving him access to large amounts of cash without selling.

This approach has been used in major moves like financing the Twitter acquisition, where he leveraged Tesla stock for a margin loan rather than cashing out.

It is a strategy many billionaires use: borrowing against appreciating assets to fund spending while deferring or avoiding capital gains taxes.

Now, non-billionaires have access to this strategy through Stelrix, the gold credit card backed by your portfolio.

Request access to the waitlist today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks rallied to close out April, fueled by strong earnings momentum and tech leadership
The S&P 500 posted its best month in years, reflecting a sharp recovery from March volatility
Big Tech results drove sentiment, though reactions were mixed beneath the surface
Bond yields moved lower, offering some relief despite persistent inflation concerns
Oil prices eased slightly, but remain elevated and a key macro driver

Economic Pulse: Holding Steady

Growth came in solid but not overheating, signaling a balanced backdrop
Business investment remains a standout, particularly tied to AI infrastructure buildout
Consumer spending softened slightly but is still supportive of overall growth
Inflation is still running above target, reinforcing a “higher for longer” tone from the Fed
Labor markets continue to show strength, with historically low jobless claims

Big Tech: Strong Results, Higher Bar

Major tech companies delivered better-than-expected results across the board
Despite strong numbers, some stocks sold off as expectations were already priced for perfection
The key tension: rising AI-related spending vs. near-term profitability
Markets are starting to ask whether massive capex today leads to durable earnings tomorrow
This signals a shift from “growth at any cost” to “show me the returns”

What the Market Is Really Saying

Earnings strength is anchoring the market near highs
But leadership is becoming more selective as valuation discipline returns
The backdrop is no longer just about growth, it is about efficient growth
Macro risks still exist, especially tied to oil and inflation, but are being absorbed
The market is transitioning from momentum-driven to fundamentals-driven

Movers & Shakers

(+) Eli Lilly ($EBAY) +10% after crushing Q1 estimates as Mounjaro and Zepbound combined for $12.8B in global revenue.
(+) Alphabet ($GOOGL) +10% because of a blowout Q1 led by Google Cloud surging 63% to $20B.
(–) Meta ($META) -9% after raising its 2026 capex forecast to $125–$145B; JPMorgan also downgraded to Neutral on AI competition concerns.

Prediction Markets

Spirit is about to get direct one-way flights to Somalia
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Rogo, an AI platform for finance, raised $160 million
Hightouch, a marketing AI startup, raised $150 million
Netomi, a customer service startup, raised $110 million
JuliaHub, an agentic AI platform for hardware engineering, raised $65 million
Axoft, a brain-computer interface startup, raised $55 million
Legora, a collaborative AI platform for lawyers, raised $50 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The 12 Levers

Description:
A structured, science-backed framework from Spencer Greenberg and Jeremy Stevenson that breaks personal growth into 12 core “levers” you can systematically improve. The book draws on psychology and behavioral science to show how small, targeted changes in thinking and behavior can create outsized impact across your life. It emphasizes clarity, measurement, and repeatability, turning self-improvement into something you can actively engineer rather than passively hope for.

Book Length: 304 pages
Release Date: July 28, 2026

Ideal For:
Anyone looking for a structured, systems-based approach to personal growth, decision-making, and improving outcomes across multiple areas of life.

You do not need to change everything at once you need to pull the right levers consistently.

DAILY VISUAL

Starbucks is Back

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

Mosaic Raises Series A

DAILY ACUMEN

Slow Yes

Saying yes too quickly is one of the more underrated ways to lose control of your own life. The dinner you committed to without thinking. The favor you agreed to before checking your week. The opportunity you said yes to because it sounded good in the moment, only to spend the next three months resenting the version of yourself who agreed to it.

Most people are far more careful with their no than their yes, which is exactly backwards. Every yes is a no to something else, usually to something quieter and more important that did not have a person standing in front of you asking.

A slower yes is not rudeness. It is the recognition that your time is the only thing you cannot manufacture more of, and that protecting it requires friction that most people are too uncomfortable to introduce.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Why people with dark personality traits seek leadership roles
The Core 4 decluttering method
How to let go of little annoyances
How to train your brain to see possibility instead of doom
5 ways to take breaks at work

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Ackman’s IPO Flop

Short Squeez — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“I had long planned to be retiring. The things that have happened really in the last three months have, I think, left me no choice but to stay until I see them through at least that long.” — Jerome Powell

Good Morning! Powell says he'll stay on the Fed board as a governor at least until his legal challenges are resolved. Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital joined a $150 million funding round for Hightouch, a generative AI platform for marketers. And junior bankers, fed up with grunt work, built a $2 billion AI tool to do it for them.

Blackstone is creating a new West Coast division, Blackstone N1, dedicated to its AI portfolio, including OpenAI and Anthropic. And Carlyle is betting on an Oracle Red Bull F1 racing deal to close the gap with Blackstone and KKR in the $150 trillion private wealth market.

Plus: New York City wants to redesign Park Avenue, the doctors leaving America for New Zealand, and the difference between anxiety and OCD.

Firms have found a trusted solution to automate 80% of their grunt work with Blueflame AI. Explore how it can do it for your firm today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Ackman’s IPO Flop

Bill Ackman finally brought his stock-picking machine to everyday investors, and the market immediately flopped. Shares of Pershing Square USA, Ackman’s new publicly traded fund, closed 18% lower in their NYSE debut Wednesday, sliding from a $50 IPO price to closing at $40.90.

The fund raised $5 billion, making it one of the biggest IPOs of the last decade, but the debut was not exactly the Main Character Energy Ackman was hoping for. He rang the opening bell with his wife, Neri Oxman, before shares started trading, and watched the fund open deep in the red.

The awkward part is that PSUS was supposed to be the vehicle that turned Ackman’s internet following into permanent capital. He has more than 2 million followers on X and has spent years becoming one of the most visible investors in the world. But most of the money in the offering reportedly came from institutions, not the everyday investors he wanted to reach. Some retail buyers also seemed wary of the structure. PSUS is a closed-end fund, and closed-end funds often trade at discounts to the value of their underlying assets. So plenty of investors apparently figured they could skip the IPO and buy it cheaper once trading started.

Ackman tried to sweeten the deal by giving IPO buyers one share of Pershing Square, his hedge-fund management company, for every five PSUS shares they purchased. Pershing Square itself also listed Wednesday under the ticker PS, opening around $24. Ackman has pushed back on calling PSUS a standard closed-end fund, describing it as “an investment management company in the body of a closed-end fund.”

The fund is expected to largely mirror Ackman’s main stock-picking strategy, with positions in companies like Alphabet and Uber, plus the occasional macro hedge when Ackman sees a big dislocation. Long term, that may work. Ackman has a real track record, real brand equity, and a very real ability to dominate the conversation. But the debut showed the limits of celebrity finance. A big X following can move a narrative. It cannot necessarily overcome closed-end fund math, IPO skepticism, and institutions looking for liquidity on day one.

Takeaway: Ackman wanted PSUS to be a retail-friendly investing platform powered by his brand, his track record, and his enormous online audience. Instead, the first trade looked more like a reminder that markets are still markets. The fund raised $5 billion, which is objectively huge. But closing down 18% is a brutal first impression for a vehicle built partly on the idea that everyday investors wanted in. Ackman may still win in the long term. But day one belonged to the people who waited for the discount.

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

Wall Street’s New Assistant Doesn’t Sleep

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks drifted lower as investors digested the Fed decision and awaited big tech earnings
Energy led gains on another move higher in oil prices
Most sectors were flat to down, reflecting a pause ahead of key catalysts
Bond yields climbed, signaling persistent inflation concerns
Global markets were mixed, with Asia stronger and Europe softer

Fed Decision: Steady, But Not Unified

The Fed held rates steady, as expected, but internal disagreement is rising
Some policymakers want to stay patient, while others are already leaning toward cuts
The overall stance still points to eventual easing, just not yet
Inflation remains the constraint, especially with oil pushing higher again
The takeaway: policy is stable, but conviction is weakening at the margins

Oil Back in Control

Oil surged again, driven by geopolitical escalation and supply concerns
This is reintroducing inflation risk into the macro narrative
Higher energy prices are starting to reshape earnings expectations across sectors
Energy and materials benefit, while consumer-facing sectors face margin pressure
The market is once again balancing growth vs inflation trade-offs

Earnings: The Deciding Factor

Earnings season is ramping into its most important phase with mega-cap tech
Results so far have been strong, with upward revisions continuing
Growth is being driven by energy, technology, and materials
Importantly, earnings strength is broad, not concentrated
Markets are holding near highs because profits are validating valuations

Movers & Shakers

(+) Intel ($INTC) +12% after Google confirmed it will use Intel's EMIB packaging technology for its next-generation TPU chips.
(+) T-Mobile ($TMUS) +6% because the company beat its Q1 estimates and raised its full-year postpaid net account adds outlook.
(–) Robinhood ($HOOD) -13% after Q1 results missed on both lines as crypto trading revenue collapsed 47% year-over-year.

Prediction Markets

Q1 GDP planned to be announced around 8am this morning.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Kone agreed to buy TK Elevator for around $31.7 billion
Chiesi agreed to acquire KalVista Pharmaceuticals, a rare disease biotech, for around $1.9 billion
Aidoc, an Israeli medical imaging platform, raised $150 million
Scout AI, a frontier lab for defense, raised $100 million
Firestorm Labs, a supplier of portable drone factories to the U.S. military, raised $82 million
Kashable, a provider of employee financial wellness programs, raised $60 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

HEARD AROUND THE STREET

Top Comments

We just rolled out unfiltered culture comments on Wall Street 360, giving you the real read on what life is actually like inside each firm.

Not the polished recruiting brochure. Not the campus presentation. The actual desk-level intel:

What the hours feel like.
Which teams are chill vs. sweatshops.
Where seniors are supportive.
Where “protected Saturdays” are more of a spiritual concept.
And which firms have great brands but brutal day-to-day vibes.

Pair it with our culture league tables and you can now see not just who ranks where, but why.

Some firms look way better once you read the comments. Others… let’s just say the brand is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

See where your firm stacks up.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Making It Without Losing It

Description:
A grounded and practical guide from Jess Ekstrom on sustaining motivation in a culture that constantly pushes for more. The book explores how to redefine success, avoid burnout, and stay driven without losing yourself in the process. It blends personal experience with actionable frameworks to help you maintain momentum while protecting your energy, identity, and long-term fulfillment.

Book Length: 256 pages
Release Date: April 22, 2025

Ideal For:
Professionals, founders, and high achievers who want to stay motivated, avoid burnout, and build sustainable success in a world of endless goals.

Motivation is not about doing more it is about learning how to keep going without losing who you are.

DAILY VISUAL

Share of U.S. Consumer Spending

PRESENTED BY GREENLAND ENERGY CO

“Drill, Baby, Drill!”

While the world debates what a Strait of Hormuz disruption means for global supply, Greenland Energy Co. has been sitting on conventional reserves that route entirely around it. The company holds rights under exclusive licenses for over 2 million acres of Greenland’s Jameson Basin, which is one of the largest unexplored hydrocarbon resources.

Not only will Greenland Energy be drilling soon, but they’ve also got these things in their favor:

Deposits are accessed via direct drilling
A $28/barrel break-even
Big name partners: IPT, Stampede Drilling, Halliburton

Learn more about Greenland Energy Company here.*

DAILY ACUMEN

Crowded Trade

Every obvious good idea attracts a crowd, and the crowd is the thing that ruins it. The neighborhood everyone agrees is the next big thing has already priced in the agreement. The career path everyone smart is funneling into has already been arbitraged. The investment thesis you read about in three different places last week is no longer a thesis. It is a consensus.

This does not mean contrarianism is automatically rewarded. Most contrarian ideas are wrong, which is why nobody believes them. But the meaningful returns, in markets and in careers, almost always come from being early to something correct, not late to something obvious.

If your reasoning sounds exactly like everyone else's reasoning, the upside has likely already left the building.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How to have the right standards when you’re dating
Does working less bring higher productivity?
3 ways EQ can help you improve your self-discipline
The difference between anxiety and OCD
How to tell if you’re breathing properly

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

*This is a paid advertisement by Greenland Energy Company.

Insiders:💰Inside the Rise of Royalties Investing

Short Squeez — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:45:00 +0000

This content is reserved for premium subscribers of Short Squeez Insiders. To Access this and other great posts, consider upgrading to premium.

UpgradeLink ConjuctionSign In

A subscription gets you:

Investing Newsletter featuring a markets recap that will keep you abreast of the most important trends in equities, real estate, and economic data, all with an entertaining spin.
Knowledge Newsletter curating top research, podcasts, articles and links that will hit your inbox Sunday mornings.
Wellness Newsletter where we delve into the ways you can optimize your physical and mental wellbeing, even with a busy work schedule
Career Newsletter including interviews with industry veterans, job opportunities, recruiting guides, and exclusive updates on comp and other Wall Street trends.

🍋 OpenAI Misses Targets

Short Squeez — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

"So I think the willingness of the mayor of New York to make this policy debate a personal attack just demonstrated a profound lack of judgment.” — Ken Griffin

Good Morning! Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin is meeting with Governor Hochul to discuss NYC's future direction after his public spat with Mamdani. Jamie Dimon is warning of "some kind of bond crisis" ahead as global debt risks build. And Meta, Google, and OpenAI are watching top staff walk out the door to launch AI startups.

Mamdani is holding the city's $127 billion budget hostage as he pressures the state to limit a tax credit used by hedge funds and private equity firms. JPMorgan joined the IOC's Worldwide Olympic Partner program as the first global banking partner in Olympic history. And the first Vegas-style casino just opened in New York City.

Plus: US gas prices jumped to a four-year high amid the Iran impasse, and etiquette experts weigh in on what to say when someone asks your salary.

AI may be hot, but oil is still king. And, Greenland Energy potentially has a lot of it. Read more about them here.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

OpenAI Misses Targets

OpenAI’s growth story just got messier. The company reportedly missed internal targets for both new users and revenue, including a goal to hit one billion weekly ChatGPT users by the end of last year. The company also missed its yearly revenue target after Google’s Gemini gained share in late 2025, then missed several monthly targets this year as Anthropic took ground in coding and enterprise.

Sam Altman released a statement yesterday calling any suggestion of a divide “ridiculous” and saying the business is “firing on all cylinders.”

But behind the scenes, CFO Sarah Friar has reportedly told company leaders she is worried OpenAI may not be able to cover future compute contracts if revenue does not grow fast enough.

The issue is simple, and OpenAI has become too important for this to stay an OpenAI story. Altman has spent years betting that compute is destiny, signing up for roughly $600 billion in future spending commitments on chips, data centers, and cloud capacity.

OpenAI also just raised $122 billion in the largest funding round in Silicon Valley history, but that money could reportedly be burned through in about three years if the company hits its own plan. The math works if revenue keeps ripping, but It gets more awkward if ChatGPT growth slows, Gemini keeps gaining share, and Anthropic keeps taking enterprise and coding customers.

Oracle fell around 4% on concerns about its massive cloud exposure to OpenAI, while CoreWeave dropped as investors questioned AI compute demand.

Arm fell more than 6%, Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom also slid, and SoftBank, one of OpenAI’s biggest backers, dropped nearly 10% in Tokyo. The Nasdaq fell more than 1% on the report. So while it is still private, it now sits at the center of a public-market web that includes chips, cloud, power, data centers, private credit, and venture capital.

Takeaway: OpenAI raised $122B at an $840B valuation on the idea that it's the defining company of the AI era, and it still might be. But the story now has a harder edge: missed user targets, missed revenue targets, a CFO worried about compute bills, and a public-market ecosystem that sells off when the model looks stretched. Altman's been right about the big picture before, but this time he needs the P&L to catch up before the compute invoices do.

PRESENTED BY GREENLAND ENERGY CO

“Drill, Baby, Drill!”

Not only will Greenland Energy be drilling soon, but they’ve also got these things in their favor:

Deposits are accessed via direct drilling
A $28/barrel break-even
Big name partners: IPT, Stampede Drilling, Halliburton

Learn more about Greenland Energy Company here.*

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks slipped modestly, with the Nasdaq lagging on tech weakness
Pressure came from AI-related names, dragging broader growth sentiment
Energy and defensive sectors outperformed, signaling a slight risk-off shift
Oil prices moved higher, approaching key levels again
Despite the pullback, markets remain near highs after a strong recent rally

AI Trade Faces Its First Real Test

Weak news tied to OpenAI raised concerns about AI demand expectations
This triggered selling in data-center and AI infrastructure stocks
Markets are beginning to question how fast growth can realistically scale
The shift is subtle, but important. It marks a move from unquestioned optimism → scrutiny
Leadership may become more selective within tech, rather than broad-based

Earnings Week Becomes Critical

A major wave of mega-cap tech earnings is about to hit
So far, results have been strong with consistent upside surprises
Technology remains the primary driver of earnings growth
However, expectations are extremely high, raising the risk of volatile reactions
This week will determine whether the rally has more fuel or needs to reset

Fed in Wait-and-See Mode

The Fed is expected to hold rates steady, with focus on messaging
Rising oil prices complicate the outlook by pushing inflation expectations higher
Policymakers are likely to remain patient and data-dependent
The key question is whether inflation is temporary or more persistent
Markets are adjusting to a reality of slower, later rate cuts

Movers & Shakers

(+) Sanmina ($SANM) +15% after crushing Q2 estimates as its ZT Systems acquisition funneled AI server demand.
(–) Oracle ($ORCL) -4% because reports emerged that OpenAI missed its internal revenue and user growth targets ahead of its IPO.
(–) Spotify ($SPOT) -12% after Q2 guidance disappointed and premium subscriber growth outlook of 299M fell short of the 302M expected.

Prediction Markets

The Fed press conference is today at 1pm EDT.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Ineffable Intelligence, a reinforcement learning startup, raised $1.1 billion
Vinted, a Lithuanian second-hand fashion marketplace, sold around $950 million in secondary shares
True Anomaly, a developer of autonomous spacecraft and software for U.S. national security, raised $650 million
Coultreon Biopharma, a Belgian immunology biotech, raised $125 million
Wiliot, a developer of sensors and software for supply chains, raised $75 million
Nervonik, a maker of peripheral nerve stimulation devices, raised $52.5 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

HEARD ON THE STREET

What Does Wall Street Actually Pay?

Everyone has a rough sense of what the market pays. Very few people know exactly what their role, at their level, in their city, at their firm type actually pays.

Wall Street 360 has live compensation data across 1,000+ firms, filterable by industry, position, firm, and location.

Investment banking to private equity to hedge funds to venture capital, every major corner of Wall Street, broken down so you can get to exactly the slice you need.

Not a salary guide published once a year that's outdated the moment it goes live. A live dataset, updated in real time as new submissions come in.

Whether you're negotiating an offer, evaluating a lateral move, or just benchmarking where you stand, we have the data:

See Comp Data

BOOK OF THE DAY

Moral Economics

Description:
A provocative and intellectually rigorous exploration from Alvin E. Roth on how markets function in morally complex spaces. The book examines controversial transactions like organ sales and prostitution to reveal deeper truths about incentives, matching markets, and the boundaries between economics and ethics. It challenges readers to rethink how markets are designed and where society draws the line on what should or should not be for sale.

Book Length: 288 pages
Release Date: May 12, 2026

Ideal For:
Readers interested in economics, market design, and the ethical boundaries of capitalism, especially those who want to understand how incentives shape real-world outcomes.

Markets do not just allocate resources they reflect the values of the society that creates them.

DAILY VISUAL

Some Feet

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How Does Elon Musk Save Billions on Capital Gains Tax?

Instead of selling his stock and triggering taxable gains, he uses his shares as collateral to secure loans, giving him access to large amounts of cash without selling.

This approach has been used in major moves like financing the Twitter acquisition, where he leveraged Tesla stock for a margin loan rather than cashing out.

It is a strategy many billionaires use: borrowing against appreciating assets to fund spending while deferring or avoiding capital gains taxes.

Now, non-billionaires have access to this strategy through Stelrix, the gold credit card backed by your portfolio.

Request access to the waitlist today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Performed Effort

Somewhere along the way, looking busy quietly replaced being useful as the thing that gets rewarded at most jobs. The person who arrives first and makes sure everyone notices. The Slack message sent at 11pm not because the work needed doing then, but because the timestamp was the point. The calendar so packed with meetings there is no time left to actually produce anything.

Performing effort and doing real work look nearly identical from a distance, especially to managers too busy to look closely. So plenty of people figure out, consciously or not, that the performance is easier and the rewards are roughly the same.

The catch is that real output compounds in a way theater never does. The quiet person doing the actual work eventually builds something the performer cannot fake their way around. It just takes longer than people expect, which is why so many give up on the real thing right before it would have paid off.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Small talk is good for us
The 3 skills that define great teammates
Etiquette experts on what to say when someone asks your salary
Why some athletes are using chatbots for their workouts
How to become less ambitious

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

*This is a paid advertisement by Greenland Energy Company.

🍋 AI Already Coming for Analysts

Short Squeez — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

"I think it's important to understand that gold is a type of money. It's the oldest kind of money.” — Ray Dalio

Good morning! OpenAI and Microsoft overhauled their partnership: Microsoft's license to OpenAI's IP is no longer exclusive, and the two sides are swapping revenue shares in a major restructuring. Ackman's Pershing Square IPO is pricing today as scheduled and expected to raise $5B. And Joby Aviation completed its first NYC test flight, sending an electric air taxi from JFK to Manhattan.

Jain Global is striking a deal to return investor capital and manage money exclusively for Millennium. HSBC is reviewing a $38K perk covering private school fees for Hong Kong bankers that costs the bank tens of millions a year. And Blue Owl fund investors rebuffed Boaz Weinstein's offer to buy their shares.

Plus: Ray Dalio says Kevin Warsh shouldn't cut rates in a stagflation era, and 3 signals strong-performing employees might still get replaced at work.

The mechanism that the wealthy have used for centuries is now available in a card. Request access to Stelrix today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

AI Already Coming for Analysts

Less than four months ago, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan went on TV and told his 210,000 employees not to worry about AI taking their jobs. But this month, after posting $8.6 billion in quarterly profit, he explained that cutting 1,000 roles through “eliminating work and applying technology” helped get there.

The six biggest U.S. banks made a combined $47 billion last quarter, up 18% year over year, while cutting roughly 15,000 employees. And this was not some coincidence buried in the footnotes; bank executives openly tied AI to the productivity gains.

Wells Fargo is using AI to generate instant credit memos, write pitchbooks, and handle customer-service calls. Citi is using tools from Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI to review legal documents, approve account openings, and send trade invoices. And at the same time, Citi has been cutting staff, including people from its own internal “AI Champions and Accelerators” program. So, the employees hired to help everyone adopt AI got replaced by AI.

For years, Wall Street sold the same comforting line: AI will handle the boring stuff, humans will do the high-value work, and everybody wins, but that line is starting to crack. Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said the quiet part out loud back in December, calling AI a tool to do things “much, much more efficiently” than humans and adding that most bank CEOs are too afraid to say headcount is going lower. Morgan Stanley has tried to sound more reassuring, saying it is not replacing financial advisers and comparing its internal AI tools to JARVIS from Iron Man.

On Wall Street, AI is not just some shiny assistant helping analysts summarize earnings calls a little faster. It is already being used to shrink support functions, automate middle-office work, speed up client materials, and quietly reduce the need for bodies across the machine. Banks are making more money, finding more “efficiency,” and needing fewer people to do it, and it’s showing up in the quarterly numbers.

Takeaway: The old Wall Street promise was that AI would augment jobs, not replace them. That sounds a lot less convincing when profits are up, headcount is down, and executives are explicitly crediting the same technology for both. The AI era on Wall Street is no longer about potential; it’s about throughput. The machines are already in the building, and the first thing they are doing is making the org chart lighter.

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How Does Elon Musk Save Billions on Capital Gains Tax?

Instead of selling his stock and triggering taxable gains, he uses his shares as collateral to secure loans, giving him access to large amounts of cash without selling.

This approach has been used in major moves like financing the Twitter acquisition, where he leveraged Tesla stock for a margin loan rather than cashing out.

It is a strategy many billionaires use: borrowing against appreciating assets to fund spending while deferring or avoiding capital gains taxes.

Now, non-billionaires have access to this strategy through Stelrix, the gold credit card backed by your portfolio.

Request access to the waitlist today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks moved higher as markets gear up for a major week of Fed decisions and big tech earnings
Leadership came from communication services and financials, while defensives lagged
Bond yields ticked higher, reflecting steady growth and inflation expectations
Global markets were strong, with Japan and Korea hitting record highs
Oil prices edged up, keeping energy and inflation in focus

Fed Week Takes Center Stage

The Fed is widely expected to hold rates steady, keeping policy unchanged for now
The real focus will be on tone and messaging around inflation and oil
Policymakers are likely to look through near-term energy-driven inflation if it proves temporary
Upcoming inflation data will be critical in shaping rate cut timing expectations
The market is shifting from “when will they cut” to “how patient will they be”

Big Tech Earnings: The Real Catalyst

A heavy slate of mega-cap tech earnings will define the next move in markets
Early earnings season has been strong, with high beat rates and rising estimates
Technology continues to drive overall earnings growth and market momentum
This week will test whether AI-driven expectations can continue to be exceeded
Market leadership and sentiment will likely hinge on guidance, not just results

Movers & Shakers

(+) Sandisk ($SNDK) +8% after Morgan Stanley raised its price target to $1,100 and argued the NAND upcycle is being underestimated.
(+) Snap, Inc. ($SNAP) +7% because Redburn upgraded to Buy, citing a strengthening subscription business and ad turnaround.
(–) Domino’s ($DPZ) -9% after Q1 EPS of $4.13 missed estimates of $4.28, and international same-store sales declined 0.4%.

Prediction Markets

Earnings Call Special (after markets close): Robinhood
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Shell agreed to buy ARC Resources, a Canadian energy firm, for $16.4 billion
Sun Pharmaceutical agreed to buy Organon & Co., a women’s health company, for around $11.75 billion
Eli Lilly agreed to acquire Ajax Therapeutics, a blood cancer biotech, for up to $2.3 billion
Apollo agreed to buy the auto interiors unit of Forvia for $2.1 billion
Astorg agreed to acquire Thermo Fisher Scientific’s microbiology business for around $1.08 billion
Ligand Pharmaceuticals agreed to buy Xoma, a drug royalties aggregator, for around $740 million
Sereact, a German robotic software startup, raised $110 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

HEARD ON THE STREET

What Does Wall Street Actually Pay?

Everyone has a rough sense of what the market pays. Very few people know exactly what their role, at their level, in their city, at their firm type actually pays.

Wall Street 360 has live compensation data across 1,000+ firms, filterable by industry, position, firm, and location.

Investment banking to private equity to hedge funds to venture capital, every major corner of Wall Street, broken down so you can get to exactly the slice you need.

Not a salary guide published once a year that's outdated the moment it goes live. A live dataset, updated in real time as new submissions come in.

Whether you're negotiating an offer, evaluating a lateral move, or just benchmarking where you stand, we have the data:

See Comp Data

BOOK OF THE DAY

Can’t Break Me

Description:
An inspiring and personal story from Kevin KAYR Robinson on resilience, mindset, and overcoming adversity. The book focuses on how internal shifts in thinking can redefine outcomes, turning setbacks into fuel for growth. Through lived experiences and practical lessons, it highlights the power of discipline, belief, and persistence in building a life that withstands pressure and challenges.

Book Length: 220 pages
Release Date: May 12, 2026

Ideal For:
Anyone facing adversity or looking to build mental toughness, resilience, and a stronger mindset to navigate life’s challenges.

Your circumstances do not define you; your mindset determines how far you go.

DAILY VISUAL

Wages Are Picking Up Again

Source: Apollo

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

The Deal Content Engine

Introducing agentic content creation in Blueflame AI.

Generate Microsoft Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Word documents with Blueflame AI’s agentic content creation tools.

Automatically synthesize, structure, and format professional-grade outputs including pitch decks, CIM summaries, and financial models, all in one workflow.

This is AI designed for how deal teams actually work: fast, iterative, and under pressure.

Spend less time polishing outputs and more time on strategic thinking. What will you create first?

See Blueflame’s deal content creation in action.

DAILY ACUMEN

Tax on Distraction

Every notification you respond to is not free. It costs you the cognitive overhead of context switching, the residual attention that lingers on what you just stopped doing, and the slow erosion of the ability to focus deeply on anything for any meaningful length of time.

The bill is paid in the work that never quite reaches its potential because it kept getting interrupted by things that felt urgent in the moment and were forgotten by evening.

The people producing the best work in any field are not necessarily the smartest. They are often just the ones who have most successfully built systems to protect their attention from the constant negotiation everyone else has surrendered to.

Focus is not a personality trait anymore. It is a discipline, and increasingly a competitive moat.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Build 3 statement models, DCFs and LBOs in 10 minutes*
Executive presence for poor public speakers
A 4-minute morning routine for a successful day
5 new activewear brands to know
4 easy shoulder exercises to get chiseled
3 signals strong-performing employees might get replaced at work

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 The Hedge Fund Replacing Humans

Short Squeez — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Together With

"If I didn't do football, I'd be grinding the streets of New York doing finance." — Fernando Mendoza, #1 Overall NFL Draft Pick (2026)

Good morning! Intel had its best day since 1987, surging 24% past its dot-com record high on a strong turnaround. Clearlake Capital investors are growing concerned its co-founders are spending too much time on sports investments (like buying the Padres) as fundraising for its flagship fund stalls. And Thrive Capital, Joshua Kushner's VC firm, is taking a stake in the SF Giants.

Bill Ackman's Pershing Square plans to offer 33.12M shares at $50 in its IPO. Google plans to invest up to $40B in Anthropic, both a partner and rival to its Gemini. And Jane Street hauled in a record $40B in revenue last year, more than any Wall Street bank and 10%+ ahead of closest rival JPMorgan.

Plus: Chick-fil-A sold $650 million of investment-grade private debt in a private placement arranged by Bank of America, mid-market bank Lincoln International filed for an IPO, and how to use procrastination to your advantage.

Learn the importance of finance-specific AI. Read Mosaic’s analysis here.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

The Hedge Fund Replacing Humans

Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta is launching a hedge fund called Abundance that wants artificial intelligence to run the entire investing process. The fund’s AI agents are supposed to find trade ideas, research companies, pick stocks, size positions, and execute trades.

In other words, AI isn’t just helping the PM; AI is the PM, analyst, trader, and increasingly the whole investment committee.

Abundance is based in Palo Alto and has a 10-person team of quant researchers, engineers, and AI specialists building the models behind the strategy. For now, the firm is mostly trading its own capital, but it plans to take outside money eventually. It has raised $100 million in seed equity financing, currently runs long-short stock strategies, and wants to expand into other asset classes over time.

The core pitch is that human investors are limited by biology and human errors. Even the best PM can only track so many companies, read so many filings, process so many headlines, and make so many good decisions before mistakes inevitably come.

Mehta thinks AI changes that and thousands of agents can scour the internet, generate ideas, run research, debate signals, and allocate capital at a scale no human team can match. Some Abundance strategies are already fully AI-run, while others still have humans involved for now.

Quant funds have automated trading for decades, and every asset manager on earth now has an AI slide buried somewhere in the pitch deck. But Abundance is trying to do something more aggressive: replace the fundamental portfolio manager, not just hand one a better tool. Mehta said he started seriously exploring the idea after OpenAI’s o3 model showed stronger reasoning ability, convincing him that generative AI could start making bigger decisions, including where to put real money.

The obvious question is whether the bots can actually beat the market. Mehta says Abundance has outperformed multiple indexes, but declined to say which ones. Ken Griffin has also been skeptical, arguing late last year that generative AI still has not meaningfully helped hedge funds beat the market.

Takeaway: Wall Street has spent the AI boom talking about copilots, productivity tools, and faster research. Abundance is asking the question of what if the investor is the bottleneck. Maybe thousands of bots can process more information, find more ideas, and trade more rationally than a person staring at six monitors while pretending not to be emotional.

Or maybe the market will do what it always does and humble the smartest machine in the room. Either way, the next hedge fund analyst might not need a Wharton degree, a Patagonia vest, or a crippling caffeine addiction; it might just need compute.

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

Can AI Build Sensitivities?

Sensitivity tables are a cornerstone of financial analysis, allowing you to view returns across various operating assumptions.

When asked to make a sensitivity table, Claude effectively recreated the entire model in one cell.

The resulting formula is impossible to audit and includes numerous hardcoded assumptions.

Claude cannot build standard sensitivities, but Mosaic can build dynamic 2D-4D tables in as little as 5 seconds.

Book a demo.

HEADLINES

Which Bulge Bracket has the Best Culture?

Now you can find out. We just rolled out culture league tables on Wall Street 360, the first time the Street has ranked firms head-to-head on culture, not just comp.

Filter by:

Bulge Brackets
Elite Boutiques
Middle Market
Private Equity
Country, city, or industry

See where your firm stacks up.

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks pushed higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq hitting new record highs again
Technology and semiconductors led, driven by strong outlooks and AI momentum
Oil rally paused, easing pressure as peace talks gained traction
Bond and currency markets were relatively calm, signaling reduced stress
Markets are leaning into a risk-on tone supported by both geopolitics and earnings

Peace Hopes Cooling Energy Pressure

Renewed momentum toward negotiations is reducing near-term geopolitical risk
The extension of regional ceasefires is helping stabilize expectations
Oil remains elevated, but the trajectory matters more than the level right now
Markets are increasingly pricing a path toward normalization
This shift is supportive for equities, especially energy-sensitive sectors

Sentiment vs Reality

Consumer sentiment is extremely weak, but actual behavior tells a different story
Spending remains resilient, supported by income and fiscal tailwinds
The labor market continues to show stability with limited layoffs
This disconnect highlights a market driven more by hard data than soft sentiment

Earnings Driving the Market

Strong earnings growth continues to be the foundation of the rally
Technology remains the clear leader, powered by AI demand and infrastructure buildout
Markets are becoming less reactive to headlines and more focused on profits
The upcoming wave of mega-cap tech earnings will be a major catalyst
Continued earnings strength is key to sustaining record-level valuations

Movers & Shakers

(+) Intel ($INTC) +24% after crushing Q1 estimated revenue of $13.58B vs. $12.42B expected, driven by data center demand.
(+) Hims & Hers ($HIMS) +9% because JPMorgan initiated coverage with an Overweight rating and $35 price target, citing the company's Novo Nordisk GLP-1 partnership.
(–) Comcast ($CMCSA) -13% after Q1 results showed operating margin collapsing to 13.1% from 17% a year ago, weighed down by a $432M Peacock EBITDA loss.

Prediction Markets

The new go-to for Commodities trading
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Cyera agreed to acquire Ryft, a data management startup, for up to $130 million
Salmon, a Filipino consumer finance app, raised $100 million
Lyft acquired the U.K. operations of Gett for about $55 million
Mintlify, a code documentation platform, raised $45 million
Bluefish, an AI marketing platform, raised $43 million
Alloy Therapeutics, an AI drug discovery startup, raised $40 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Art of Fighting

Description:
A thoughtful and practical exploration from Priya Parker on how conflict, when approached intentionally, can become a powerful tool for growth and connection. The book reframes disagreement as something to be designed and guided rather than avoided, offering frameworks to engage in productive conflict that leads to better outcomes, deeper understanding, and stronger relationships.

Book Length: 272 pages
Release Date: September 8, 2026

Ideal For:
Leaders, teams, and anyone looking to navigate conflict more effectively and turn difficult conversations into opportunities for growth

Conflict handled well is not destructive it is one of the fastest paths to clarity and progress.

DAILY VISUAL

UNH Spends $1.7M Protecting C-suite

PRESENTED BY ACRETRADER

Farmland: A Real Asset for the Modern Portfolio

Invest in the one thing they aren’t making any more of: Farmland. These are real assets for a rising-cost world.

The Proterra AcreTrader Farmland Fund LP combines AcreTrader’s expert sourcing and management with the institutional power of Proterra Investment Partners. The Fund provides diversification across high-quality U.S. farmland assets, offering an open-ended gateway into an essential asset class that has historically provided consistent returns.

Why the Proterra AcreTrader Fund?

Real Assets: Direct access to high-quality U.S. farmland via a tax-efficient private REIT.
Portfolio Stability: Access a tangible asset with the potential to serve as an inflation hedge, based on farmland's historically low correlation to stocks and bonds.
Historical Performance: Access an asset class that has delivered a 9.4% average annual return since 1997, with low volatility.*

Learn more here: AcreTrader.com

DAILY ACUMEN

Sunk Identity

The hardest thing to walk away from is rarely the money or the time you have already spent. It is the version of yourself that the project, the relationship, or the career was supposed to confirm. Quitting feels like an admission that you were wrong about something larger than the decision itself.

This is why intelligent people stay in obviously broken situations far longer than makes any sense. Not because they cannot see the exit, but because the exit would require contradicting a story they have been telling themselves and others for years.

The cost of leaving feels enormous in the moment. The cost of staying is just paid quietly, in installments, over the rest of your life.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How to use procrastination to your advantage
How quiet time makes you a better leader
Your job title doesn’t define your work
What the best private equity backed CEOs do differently
Why smart leaders do less

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Swap Your House for Anthropic

Short Squeez — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 09:14:08 +0000

Together With

“Fundraising requires narrative, and “we are building God” is a better pitch than “we wrote some very clever linear algebra, pirated the internet, and threw a bunch of compute at it." — Chamath Palihapitiya

Good Morning! LVMH-backed private equity firm L Catterton is launching a $500mn fund with athletes including Kevin Durant, Joe Burrow, and Livvy Dunne. Trump says the US is weighing a Spirit Airlines purchase. And Citadel is threatening to halt its NYC expansion after Mamdani called out Ken Griffin's $238M penthouse, with Griffin's deputy calling the targeting "shameful."

Microsoft is offering its first-ever voluntary retirement buyout for US employees whose age and years of service add up to 70 or more. And Meta is laying off 10% of its workforce, roughly 8,000 employees, in an AI push.

Plus: 8 of Blackstone's top 10 Q1 investments were data-center related, BCG says AI drove 25% of 2025 revenue, and Goldman wants to claw back $20M+ from former banker Tim Leissner.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Swap Your House for Anthropic

The latest AI trade is not happening through a venture fund, a secondary platform; it is apparently happening via mansion swap.

Storm Duncan, founder of tech-focused investment bank Ignatious and a former global head of technology M&A at Jefferies, is trying to trade his 14-acre Mill Valley estate for shares of Anthropic. The house is a 4,400-square-foot, four-bedroom compound in the hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge, with an infinity pool, sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, and an estimated value around $8 million. Duncan is offering to cover closing costs for any Anthropic shareholder willing to do the deal.

The timing makes it unhinged. Anthropic reportedly crossed a $1 trillion valuation in secondary markets this week, surpassing OpenAI and turning into the hottest private stock on earth. Anthropic is hovering around $1 trillion on Forge Global, with some offers implying valuations as high as $1.15 trillion. Three months ago, the company was valued at $380 billion.

That is where Duncan’s pitch starts to make sense. He already owns Anthropic shares from a 2024 funding round and says he knows the management team through prior work. But getting more stock is apparently hard enough that he is willing to trade one of the most valuable things a normal rich person owns: Bay Area real estate.

The proposed structure lets a seller retain 20% of upside value before shares transfer, and Duncan argues buying directly from an individual offers more transparency than chasing shares through secondary markets.

The details only make it better. Duncan's estate has apparently hosted blockbuster parties with up to 700 guests, from celebs to real estate moguls to tech power players. He noted that if the house had "blown up during one of those parties, it would have been a problem for the tech world."

He now splits time between Miami and Wyoming while a “very famous” VC allegedly rents the Mill Valley place. So the asset being offered for Anthropic stock is, essentially, a VC networking compound with a waterfall pool and a LinkedIn listing.

Takeaway: AI mania has officially moved past spreadsheets. When a former Jefferies banker trades an $8M mansion for shares of a company flirting with a $1T valuation, we're in the "will swap real estate for Claude exposure" phase of the bubble. Maybe Duncan looks like a genius in five years. But this is about as subtle as a SoftBank pitch deck in 2021.

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

A Private Bank in Your Wallet

Family offices and private banking clients have accessed capital by borrowing against their assets for generations, using their portfolios as collateral while keeping investments intact and compounding. Traditional securities-backed lines require $100,000 minimums and weeks of underwriting, keeping this approach exclusive to institutional relationships.

Stelrix built that same infrastructure into a sleek gold card that connects directly to your existing brokerage. This equates to dynamic buying power and smart APR. Your credit and holdings remain untouched, so they can continue generating returns while you access spending power in real time. Limits are dynamic, based on your portfolio value. It’s like a private bank in your pocket.

Reserve your gold card today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks pulled back slightly after recent all-time highs, with the Nasdaq lagging
The move felt more like a pause than a reversal following a strong rally
Year-to-date, markets remain solidly positive, with leadership shifting beneath the surface
Cyclical sectors like energy, materials, and industrials continue to outperform
The broader tone reflects stabilizing rates, resilient earnings, and easing worst-case fears

Ceasefire Holding, But Not Fully Resolved

The extended ceasefire continues to reduce immediate downside risk
Energy markets still show underlying stress despite improving sentiment
Oil remains elevated, but expectations point to eventual normalization
Markets are pricing this as a temporary disruption, not a lasting shock
The key variable remains how quickly supply chains fully recover

What Happens After a Fast Rebound

The sharp rally back to highs suggests markets have repriced quickly
Historically, these fast recoveries often lead to a pause or consolidation phase
Not all V-shaped rebounds sustain momentum. Some transition into sideways markets
The next leg likely depends on earnings follow-through and oil stabilization
Markets are shifting from relief rally → digestion phase

Movers & Shakers

(+) Texas Instruments ($EBAY) +19% after crushing Q1 estimates with 90% year-over-year growth in data center revenue.
(+) Penn Entertainment ($EBAY) +17% because the gambling company beat Q1 estimates with interactive segment losses narrowing 88% year-over-year.
(–) Blackstone ($BX) -6% after flat returns in private credit and losses in its portfolio.
Prediction Markets

Markets will be up only with a deal, right?
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Tortugas Neuroscience, a neurology-focused biotech, raised $106 million
Cloudsmith, a software component protection platform, raised $72 million
Omni, an AI analytics company, raised $69 million
Orkes, an AI deployment startup, raised $60 million
Courier Health, a patient experience management company, raised $50 million
Resolve AI, an agentic AI startup that fixes software, raised $40 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

How to Get a Return on Failure

Description:
A practical, mindset-driven guide from John C. Maxwell on turning setbacks into long-term advantages. The book reframes failure as an asset, showing how to extract lessons, build resilience, and compound growth through adversity. It focuses on intentional reflection, disciplined execution, and using failure as a catalyst for stronger future outcomes rather than a stopping point.

Book Length: 224 pages
Release Date: April 14, 2026

Ideal For:
Leaders, operators, and anyone looking to bounce back stronger, learn faster, and turn setbacks into measurable progress

Failure is not the opposite of success it is the raw material you use to build it.

DAILY VISUAL

Tripping Up the Market

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

The Deal Content Engine

DAILY ACUMEN

Patience

Patience is not passive. It is an active skill, and the people who have developed it have a structural advantage over almost everyone else in almost every domain.

Markets reward it. Relationships require it. Careers are built on it. And in a culture engineered to reduce every wait time to zero, the ability to sit with anticipation without flinching is becoming rare enough to be a competitive edge.

The person who cannot wait will take the first offer, exit the position at the wrong time, end the relationship before it had a chance to deepen, and quit the project right before it would have broken through. Not because they lacked intelligence or effort, but because they could not stand the specific discomfort of not knowing yet.

Most of what you want is on the other side of a wait you do not want to do.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Why your bench press isn’t improving
How to manage difficult directors
Why your next career move might be a demotion
The best cold brew makers
How being nice at work can hurt your career

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 $100M Fees Are Back

Short Squeez — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.” — Morgan Housel

Good morning! Thoma Bravo is handing Medallia to creditors after restructuring talks collapsed, a $5.1B equity wipeout on a business bought for $6.4B in 2021. Google Cloud is launching a $750M fund to help McKinsey, Accenture, and Deloitte bring agentic AI to clients. And 29% of employees admit to sabotaging their company's AI strategy, a number that jumps to 44% among Gen Z.

Palantir inked a $300M deal with the USDA to safeguard the food supply. AllianceBernstein shut down its hedge fund Arya after lack of scale caught up with it. And Wall Street is selling sophisticated quant trading to the masses.

Plus: RFK Jr. backs a ban on junk food TV ads, EQT warns AI fears will stall PE software stake sales, and longevity tips for body and brain.

Blueflame now has agentic content creation to accelerate your deal diligence and presentation. Request a demo today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

$100M Fees Are Back

In the entire history of M&A, only 16 deals had ever generated fees of at least $100 million for a single bank advising the target. But in 2025, six banks did, and 2026 is already adding more.

Goldman Sachs advised on the EA take-private, Hologic, and Avidity Biosciences, collecting $110 million, $109 million, and $108 million, respectively. Bank of America is set to collect $130 million for advising Norfolk Southern on its sale to Union Pacific. Allen & Co. made $100 million for the Warner Bros. Discovery deal.

The math is straightforward, even if the numbers are staggering. Advisory fees are calculated as a percentage of deal value and paid on close, so when the deals get bigger, the checks get bigger. The average U.S. deal size jumped 30% in the first quarter alone, to $725 million, and hit an all-time peak of $1.02 billion in Q4 2025.

Globally, corporate deals above $10 billion have just had their best quarter ever. The Trump administration’s lighter touch on antitrust has opened the door to transactions that would have faced years of regulatory combat under prior regimes, and bankers are sprinting through it. Median sell-side fees on U.S. public company acquisitions above $100 million hit 1.48% of enterprise value in 2025, up from 1.17% in 2019. The fees were already going up and the deals got bigger on top of that.

The other factor nobody talks about enough is the talent premium. The best M&A bankers, the ones who have closed the biggest deals in a given sector and know every potential buyer in the room, have genuine pricing power right now.

Qatalyst got the Smartsheet mandate because the company’s CFO said the bank had a “surgical” understanding of possible buyers and had “mastered the narrative” of the business relative to getting a multibillion-dollar premium. That’s a specific, demonstrable edge that a board will pay for when the stakes are high enough. The $88 million Qatalyst collected on Smartsheet’s $8.4 billion take-private tells you exactly what that edge is worth.

Takeaway: M&A advisory fees in the early 1980s averaged around $10 million in inflation-adjusted terms, but now they’re routinely hitting $100 million or more for a single bank on a single deal. And 40 years of boards gaining negotiating power and deal sizes compounding upward have produced this moment. The M&A boom is real, the pipelines are full, and somewhere in the bullpen right now, a banker who spent three years grinding through the deal drought is having a very, very good April.

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

The Deal Content Engine

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks moved higher, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq reaching new closing highs
Leadership came from technology and communication services, reinforcing a risk-on tone
Bond yields edged lower, signaling stable macro expectations
The U.S. dollar strengthened, while global markets were mixed
Investors are increasingly looking past geopolitics and focusing on earnings

Ceasefire Extension Calms Markets

The extension of the ceasefire has reduced near-term geopolitical risk
Markets are treating disruptions as temporary rather than structural
Oil prices remain elevated, but forward expectations point to normalization over time
If energy prices ease, this could relieve inflation and support margins across sectors
The key shift is markets moving from fear → normalization mindset

Earnings Momentum Building

Early earnings results are coming in strong, with high beat rates and solid upside
Growth is being driven by technology, but supported across multiple sectors
The market is rewarding execution, not just narrative
Sustained earnings strength is reinforcing confidence at all-time highs

Movers & Shakers

(+) Canopy Growth ($CGC) +21% after Trump is preparing an executive order to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.
(+) GE Verona ($GEV) +14% because the energy company raised its full-year revenue outlook surging AI data center power demand.
(–) Best Buy ($BBY) -5% after the retailer announced its CEO Corie Barry will step down October 31.

Prediction Markets

Claude is just sooo good. Claude Cowork is a life hack.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Reliable Robotics, an aviation autonomy systems company, raised $160 million
Ray Therapeutics, a vision restoration biopharma startup, raised $125 million
AcuityMD, a medtech software platform, raised $80 million
Artemis, a provider of AI-cyber detection and automated response services, raised $70 million
Serif Biomedicines, a biotech developing DNA-based medicines, launched with $50 million
Expo, a developer tooling startup, raised $45 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Risk Worth Taking

Description:
A personal and empowering story from Teri Ijeoma on leaving a traditional path to build a life centered on freedom and self-direction. The book blends memoir with practical insights on trading, risk-taking, and mindset, showing how financial skills can become a vehicle for independence. It emphasizes courage, discipline, and redefining success on your own terms.

Book Length: 240 pages
Release Date: July 14, 2026

Ideal For:
Aspiring traders, professionals considering a career pivot, and anyone looking to build financial independence and design a life with more freedom.

The biggest risk is staying in a life that no longer fits who you are becoming.

DAILY VISUAL

Let’s Get This Bread

Source: Chartr

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

How Reliable Are LLMs for Financial Modeling?

AI has transformed Wall Street's language work: summarizing earnings calls, processing CIMs, drafting memos. But financial modeling is a different problem entirely.

LLMs are probabilistic. Run the same model twice, get two different answers. For an expert call summary, that's fine. For an LBO backing a multi-billion dollar decision, that's a structural flaw. A 99% accurate LBO is still a wrong LBO.

What firms need is purpose-built software where the math never varies. That's Mosaic.

Read the full article here.

DAILY ACUMEN
Default Settings

Almost every significant thing about your life was chosen for you before you had the capacity to choose it. The language you think in. The country you consider home. The assumptions you make about money, family, success, and what a good life looks like.

These arrived as defaults, and most people live and die inside them without ever once questioning whether they would have chosen them from scratch.

This is not a call to reject everything you came from. Some of those defaults are genuinely good. But there is a meaningful difference between a life you actively chose and a life you simply inherited and never got around to examining.

The question is not whether the defaults are right. The question is whether you have looked at them recently enough to know.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

The golden age of packing
The single cause of cognitive decline and a cure
Why spring cleaning is good for you
How flowing water can model the economy
How to keep your body and brain happy

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Avis Goes Vertical

Short Squeez — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Together With

"The Fed must stay in its lane. Fed independence is placed at greatest risk when it strays into fiscal and social policies where it has neither authority nor expertise.” — Kevin Warsh

Good morning! Trump extended the Iran ceasefire indefinitely, citing a fractured government. SpaceX has penciled in a $60B right-to-acquire deal for AI startup Cursor. Netflix is in talks to buy a historic LA studio lot at a steep discount to its 2021 $1.85B price after Goldman-led lenders repossessed it.

Fed nominee Kevin Warsh told his hearing he won't be Trump's sock puppet and made no rate commitments. A former partner at $36B hedge fund Davidson Kempner says he was pushed out after blowing the whistle. And banks are dangling 30% raises to meet surging India IPO demand.

Plus: Trump wants someone to buy Spirit Airlines, how a half-empty ex-KKR HQ became NYC's hottest office, and why hybrid fitness beats other workouts.

The firms gaining the greatest edge are the ones being proactive in their AI implementation. Are you? Request access to Endex today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Avis Goes Vertical

Twitter tweet

The latest short squeeze just dropped, and this time it's an airport rental car company. Avis Budget is up more than 600% in April and hit a record high yesterday, with trading halted multiple times before lunch after the stock ripped to around $740 a share.

The move has all the ingredients of a proper face-ripper. As of Monday, 86.2% of Avis's available float was sold short, basically meme-stock fuel.

Meanwhile, two hedge funds, SRS Investment Management and Pentwater Capital, control more than 71% of outstanding shares.

Pentwater has even been adding, filing Tuesday that it picked up another 34,700 shares at $85 each. That stake is now worth more than $4.3 billion. When that much of the float is bolted down by a couple of conviction holders with no reason to lend, shorts aren't really trading anymore, they're locked in a burning room with no door.

And once the squeeze begins, the script writes itself. The stock rises, shorts scramble to cover, the covering lifts it higher, more shorts get forced out, and suddenly an airport rental car business is trading like peak GameStop.

Short sellers have lost roughly $4.09 billion on Avis this month, nearly $1 billion on Monday alone. None of which has anything to do with the business suddenly finding religion. Avis lost $856 million last quarter, revenue declined, and both Barclays and Deutsche Bank downgraded the stock. The company also had a similar meme-style explosion back in 2021, so this isn't exactly uncharted territory.

Takeaway: Short sellers looked at a rental car company that just burned $856 million in a quarter and decided they'd found the cleanest trade on the board. Fundamentally, they may have been right. Mechanically, they got obliterated. That's the beauty and violence of a real short squeeze, the worse the setup looks on paper, the more painful it can get when positioning breaks against you. Avis the business may be struggling, but Avis the ticker just turned into the latest meme-stock war crime.

PRESENTED BY ENDEX

All Major Bank CEOs Convene to Discuss AI

Every major bank CEO in America was called into an emergency meeting with Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to discuss the latest frontier AI model release.

The "wait and see" era for AI in finance is over, as models from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI are showing drastic MoM improvement across finance benchmarking.

Firms are gaining an edge by tailoring AI to how their team actually works, and embedding it across their suite of tools. Endex's custom deployments are how leading Wall Street firms are building complex Excel models end-to-end.

Request access to Endex today.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks slipped as geopolitical uncertainty resurfaced, reversing early gains
Markets reacted to a pause in U.S.–Iran negotiations and looming ceasefire expiration
Bond yields moved higher, reflecting renewed inflation concerns
Oil prices climbed, adding pressure to risk sentiment
Global markets diverged, with Asia stronger and Europe weaker

Geopolitics Driving the Tape

The pause in negotiations has reintroduced near-term uncertainty into markets
Investors appear cautious, but not panicked, suggesting baseline expectations still lean toward resolution
Oil’s move higher shows how quickly risk premium can return to energy markets
Europe is showing more sensitivity, highlighting regional exposure to energy shocks

Consumer and Labor Still Holding Up

Retail data showed strong underlying demand, even excluding energy-related spending
Consumer strength remains broad-based, not just inflation-driven
Labor trends continue to point to a stable, gradually cooling environment
This combination supports a backdrop of resilient economic growth
The consumer remains a key anchor preventing downside macro scenarios

Fed Outlook in Focus

Attention is shifting toward potential leadership changes at the Federal Reserve
A more dovish tilt at the top could influence rate expectations at the margin
However, policy decisions remain committee-driven, limiting any single voice
Markets continue to expect gradual easing, not aggressive cuts
The path of inflation, especially tied to oil, remains the key swing factor

Movers & Shakers

(+) Spirit Airlines ($FLYYQ) +122% after Bloomberg reported the bankrupt carrier floated offering the U.S. government an equity stake, sparking a short squeeze.
(+) UnitedHealth ($UNH) +7% because the health insurance giant beat Q1 estimates with adjusted EPS of $7.23 vs. $6.65 expected.
(–) JetBlue ($JBLU) -5% after JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman publicly warned the airline is headed for bankruptcy,

Prediction Markets

Earnings Call Special (after markets close): Tesla
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Blue Owl Capital agreed to acquire Sila Realty Trust for $2.4 billion
Blue Energy, a prefabricated nuclear power plant company, raised $380 million
Neomorph, a developer of molecular glue degraders for addressing undruggable proteins, raised $100 million
Adcendo, a Danish developer of ADCs for treating cancers, raised $75 million
Wealth.com, an estate planning platform, raised $65 million
Storm Therapeutics, a developer of RNA-retargeting cancer drugs, raised $56 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Tell Me Everything

Description:
A tactical communication guide from Brad Beeler on how to build trust quickly and get to the truth in high-stakes situations. Drawing from real-world experience, the book breaks down techniques for reading people, asking better questions, and creating environments where others feel comfortable opening up. It focuses on practical methods to improve influence, uncover hidden information, and communicate effectively under pressure.

Book Length: 256 pages
Release Date: February 17, 2026

Ideal For:
Leaders, operators, and anyone looking to improve communication, build trust faster, and navigate complex interpersonal dynamics.

People will tell you everything if you know how to make them feel safe enough to speak.

DAILY VISUAL

Mortgage Rate Hangover

Source: CNBC

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

A Private Bank in Your Wallet

Reserve your gold card today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Allies

The people who celebrate your wins with genuine enthusiasm are a smaller group than you think. Most people are fine with you succeeding as long as you do not succeed too much, too fast, or in a direction that makes them reconsider their own choices. The moment your trajectory threatens the story they tell themselves about their own, the warmth cools in ways that are hard to name and impossible to miss.

Rooting for someone else's actual flourishing, without any edge of comparison, is genuinely rare.

Pay close attention to the people who light up when you win. They are worth more than almost anything else you will accumulate.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Why money is more mental
Why hybrid fitness is more efficient than other workouts
We may have less control over how long we live than previously thought
Why your workout isn’t working
10 phrases highly approachable people use

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

🍋 Wall Street Feeds Itself

Short Squeez — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:30:00 +0000

Together With

“The key to having success is having the right people, and the key to having the right people is having the right culture” — Ray Dalio

Good Morning! Jersey Mike's confidentially filed for an IPO a little over a year after Blackstone bought a majority stake in the sandwich chain for $8 billion. Tim Cook is stepping up to Executive Chairman with John Ternus set to become Apple's next CEO.

Direct lending funds raised just $10.7 billion in Q1, the lowest quarterly total in three years. Spirit Airlines is floating offering the government a potential equity stake to avoid liquidation. And the Ferrari of espresso machines is quietly fueling a hot resale market.

Plus: How private credit's cracks are threatening to deepen private equity's woes, and 26 ways to work smarter and avoid burnout.

How reliable are LLMs for financial modeling? Read more to find out.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Wall Street Feeds Itself

Big banks just posted a monster quarter, and most of the money is being reinvested right back into Wall Street. The biggest banks doubled down on the parts of their business that were already booming: trading desks, hedge fund financing, and other institutional lending.

Across the six biggest U.S. banks, trading revenue jumped 17% in Q1, and trading-related assets climbed about 20% year over year. Loans through trading desks to hedge funds, private credit funds, and other institutional clients rose around 25% or more at several major banks.

JPMorgan called markets lending "the primary driver of wholesale loan growth recently." Morgan Stanley said it "strategically deployed leverage-based capital" to support its markets franchise, a polished way of saying it leaned harder into financing clients that trade.

Powering the shift is excess capital banks built up during the Biden administration, when they were preparing for tougher requirements. Under the Trump administration, requirements are expected to stay flat or fall, freeing up capital to redeploy.

That stands out because the rest of the lending picture looked ordinary. Consumer loans grew at low single-digit rates, and commercial banking for midsize businesses wasn't much better. So while headline results looked broad-based, much of the real growth came from putting more money to work inside the financial system itself.

That's a great business when markets are active, volatility is high, and clients need financing. But it also means more exposure to the fastest-moving part of finance. Hedge fund prime-brokerage borrowing roughly doubled from early 2023 to the end of last year, and S&P Global warned this week that rapidly expanding balance sheets at hedge funds and prop trading firms are creating risks for major global banks.

Takeaway: Big banks had a great quarter, and they used the momentum to do more of what was already working. It's profitable, it's scalable, and it's exactly what the new regulatory environment allows. But the strongest part of bank growth is now coming from Wall Street feeding Wall Street, which means when markets turn, the exposure comes with it.

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

How Reliable Are LLMs for Financial Modeling?

AI has transformed how Wall Street handles language-based work. Summarizing earnings calls, processing CIMs, drafting memos… for tasks like these, LLMs are definitely a game changer.

But financial modeling is a different problem entirely.

LLMs are probabilistic by nature. Run the same model twice and you get two different answers. For a summary of an expert call, that's fine. For an LBO supporting a multi-billion dollar investment decision, that's a structural problem.

A financial model needs to be 100% correct. A 99% accurate LBO is still a wrong LBO. And LLMs are nowhere near 99%...

AI adds more randomness to a system that needs less.

What firms actually need is purpose-built software where the math is locked in and never in doubt. Not AI making it up as it goes.

That's the approach Mosaic takes, fully automating the LBO process so the output is the same every single time. The questions on a deal should be about the business, not whether the math is working correctly.

Read the full article here.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

Stocks edged lower as geopolitical tensions resurfaced over the weekend
The pullback was modest, signaling markets remain relatively calm despite headlines
Small caps outperformed, hinting at underlying risk appetite
Bond yields were steady, reflecting a balanced macro backdrop
Oil prices moved higher, but stayed below recent peaks

Geopolitics Back in Play

Renewed tensions around the Strait of Hormuz brought energy markets back into focus
Despite escalation, market reaction suggests investors still expect de-escalation overall
International markets, especially in Asia, showed resilience despite energy sensitivity
Headlines are likely to drive short-term volatility, but not a full risk-off shift
The market is increasingly treating these events as temporary disruptions, not structural threats

Earnings Season Accelerates

A larger wave of companies reporting this week will set the tone for the next leg of the market
Early results have been strong, reinforcing confidence in corporate fundamentals
Some sectors are seeing pressure from higher energy costs, particularly cyclicals
However, strength in technology, energy, and materials is offsetting that drag
Broad earnings growth remains a key pillar supporting equity valuations at current levels

Movers & Shakers

(+) Compass Pathways ($CMPS) +42% after Trump signed an executive order to accelerate research and FDA review of psychedelic medicines.
(+) Marvell Technology ($MRVL) +6% because the company is in talks with Google to co-develop two custom AI chips.
(–) American Airlines ($AAL) -4% after the company dismissed talk of a United megamerger.

Prediction Markets

US Retail Sales for March announced today at 8:30am EDT.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

QXO agreed to acquire TopBuild, an insulation company, for $17 billion
Brady agreed to acquire Honeywell’s Productivity Solutions and Services business for $1.4 billion
Apollo agreed to acquire a 13% interest in McKesson’s Medical-Surgical Solutions for $1.3 billion
Recursive Superintelligence, a neolab founded by former Google engineers, raised at least $500 million
Bally’s Intralot is nearing a deal to acquire Evoke, the owner of William Hill, for around $300 million
Loop, a platform for logistics and supply chains, raised $95 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Courage to Commit

Description:
A grounded and motivational guide from Shawn Johnson and Andrew East on the overlooked power of commitment in a world that constantly pushes for optionality. The book explores how staying the course, through uncertainty and doubt, is often the real differentiator between success and stagnation. It blends personal stories with practical insights on discipline, resilience, and building a life around long-term dedication.

Book Length: 240 pages
Release Date: June 9, 2026

Ideal For:
Anyone struggling with consistency, decision paralysis, or the temptation to constantly pivot instead of committing to a path.

The real power is not in starting something new it is in staying with something long enough for it to change you.

DAILY VISUAL

Trading Is Getting Younger, Ownership Is Getting Older

Sources: Federal Reserve, Macrobond, Apollo Chief Economist

PRESENTED BY F2

AI That Won’t ‘Jump the Gun’

Isn’t it the most frustrating thing when you prompt GPT, Claude, Grok (insert your favorite finance AI here), and they immediately jump to working rather than listening and planning?

Thus follows the typical AI workflow in finance:

1) Run it. 2) Review it. 3) Find assumption errors. 4) Redo it.

While AI may be helpful, it has a tendency to act first and ask questions later (unless prompted).

Plan Mode from F2 lets you review the entire workflow before it runs:

the logic
the assumptions
the build path

Build the plan upfront, let the agents handle the grunt work.

This equates to fewer drafts, faster outputs, and way less time retracing steps.

See how Plan Mode works.

DAILY ACUMEN

Fear

A surprising amount of what you are afraid of was never actually yours. It was absorbed, often before you were old enough to evaluate it, from a parent who grew up in a different economy, a culture shaped by a different set of risks, or a previous generation whose hard-earned caution made perfect sense in their context and almost none in yours.

The tells are specific. Fears that feel older than your own experience. Anxieties that flare up in situations that have not actually hurt you. Rules about money, ambition, visibility, or risk that you cannot quite justify but cannot bring yourself to break.

Most people spend their lives defending inherited caution as if it were wisdom. Some of it is. A lot of it is just somebody else's scar that you are still bleeding from.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How Pepsi became a factory for CEOs
26 ways to work smarter and avoid burnout
The leadership blind spot draining workplace performance
The more you study consciousness, the weirder it gets
7 quietly powerful traits of emotionally secure

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 800+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.

Short Squeez

🍋 Welcome to the AI IPO Era

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Welcome to the AI IPO Era

PRESENTED BY FISHER INVESTMENTS

Keep Your Retirement Right on Track

HEADLINES

Top Reads

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

BOOK OF THE DAY

How To Rule The World

DAILY VISUAL

Smartphones 12% Cheaper than Last Year

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

An AI Analyst Can Now Turn Your MD’s Comments Into Action

DAILY ACUMEN

Forty Percent

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

🍋 Banks Making a Comeback

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Banks Making a Comeback

PRESENTED BY DALOOPA

How to Build Research Agents and AI-Powered Workflows

HEADLINES

Top Reads

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

BOOK OF THE DAY

Yesteryear

DAILY VISUAL

Tomato Prices Surge 40%

PRESENTED BY GREENLAND ENERGY COMPANY

The Land of Liquid Gold?

DAILY ACUMEN

Protein First

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

🍋 Make As Rare Again

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Make A’s Rare Again

PRESENTED BY GREENLAND ENERGY COMPANY

The Land of Liquid Gold?

HEADLINES

Top Reads

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Winner’s Curse

DAILY VISUAL

Memory Loss

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

Wall Street’s New Assistant Doesn’t Sleep

DAILY ACUMEN

Resting Pulse

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

🍋 OF Meets Wall Street

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

OF Meets Wall Street

PRESENTED BY ENDEX

Speculated Gemini 4 Announcement Heats Up Frontier Model Race

HEADLINES

Top Reads

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

BOOK OF THE DAY

Outsmart Everyone

DAILY VISUAL

[ ]

PRESENTED BY FISHER INVESTMENTS

Is Your Retirement Plan Built to Last?

DAILY ACUMEN