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Your Daily Dose of Market & Career Clarity

📬 Delivered to 150,000+ ambitious readers

🎯 In this issue:

• Banana Bits: Finance headlines that actually matter

• Market Summary: The market clawed its way to a positive gain

• What’s Ripe / Rotten: The tastiest and most disgusting stocks 

• Technical Trip: Interview Q&A from Moelis

• Deal Dispatch: M&A, IPOs, and other transactions 

• The Daily Poll: See how you stack up

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• A bad score for Fed: inflation ticks up to +2.9% vs 2.7% in July, with core being at 3.1%.

• Jobless claims hit the spotlight after overshadowing inflation gains.

• Gold surpasses inflation-adjusted record high set in 1980.

• OpenAI and Meta face an FTC inquiry on the impact of chatbots on kids.

• UPS gets a sell rating at BofA after tariff impacts.

• Fannie and Freddie get buy ratings after possible release from government.

• JPMorgan sees U.S. buybacks jumping by another $600 billion.

• The European Central Bank kept borrowing costs unchanged at 2%.

• Stablecoin summer brings headache to firms as pay soars.

Market Recap

What’s Next for the Fed?

Thursday was supposed to be a negative day for investors as inflation and core inflation ticked up YOY, and the job market is losing its steam, signifying a possible slowdown for the U.S. economy. 

Instead, the market celebrates like we are in a Goldilocks moment, where in fact we’re not. Across the board, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose 0.79 % and 0.8% respectively, while the Dow Jones soared 1.3%. 

So what exactly is the market expecting? 

Diving into the market, investors view the inflation data as in line with expectations, meaning it doesn’t change the narrative of a rate cut in September or might even give a boost as the data remains tame. 

On the other hand, the jobless claims data puts pressure on the Fed to go for a September rate cut as jobless claims hit the highest level since October 2021. 

Nearly 90% of the traders see interest rates in the range of 3.5% to 3.75%. 

This means that there is a possibility of three rate cuts of 25 basis points for each month; however, this doesn’t mean that we are out of the woods because some investors see it differently. Gold’s soaring price can be seen as a possibility of a stagflation risk. 

Currently, as we witnessed a rally in tech stocks, some investors are actually worried about its sustainability, thus hedging against a drop in the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF, which is at its highest since 2022 

What's Ripe

Opendoor Technologies Inc. (OPEN) 79.5%

• Opendoor soared in Thursday trading after the company tapped Shopify’s CEO, Kaz Nejatian. 

• This came after ousting its former CEO in August after pressure from retail investors.

• Management aims to focus on AI and bring founders back to management.

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) 29.0%

• WBD surged 28.95% after the Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount Skydance was prepping a takeover.

• Paramount is looking to make a majority cash offer for the company, including its cable networks and movie studio.

What's Rotten

Klarna Group PLC (KLAR) 6.7%

• KLAR shares fell 6.7% to $42.74 after making its debut on Wednesday at $52.

• The Swedish buy-now-pay-later service provider raised $1.37 billion from sales.

Oracle Corp. (ORCL) 6.2%

• ORCL was down 6.2% a day after shares of the database-software company.

• The move followed news that Oracle’s backlog of work under contract rose to $455 billion in its fiscal first quarter from $138 billion in the fourth quarter.

🧠 Technical Trip

Q&A Interview with Moelis

👉 Want 1-on-1 recruiting help from Moelis bankers & 2,000+ top mentors? Apply to WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• UK fintech Starling shifts focus to New York IPO after key hire.

• JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank lead €750 million Kelvion buyout debt.

• Figure indicated to open 40% higher after $787.5 million IPO.

• PAI, ICG ink Infra Group stake sale at €3 billion valuation.

• Carlyle plots new $4 billion-plus fund to unlock cash from PE stakes.

• GTCR to buy drugmaker Zentiva from Advent in $4.8 billion deal.

• Alibaba leads Chinese tech funding spree with $3.2 billion deal.

• Paramount Skydance is preparing a bid for Warner Bros.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

Biggest red flag right now?

Rising unemployment: 70.8% // Bank/consumer stock weakness: 11.5% // Nvidia slump: 10.4% // IPO wipeouts: 7.3%

Student Success Corner

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

It would take 1 machine 4 hours to complete a large production order, and another machine 3 hours to complete the same order. How many hours would it take both machines, working simultaneously at their respective constant rates, to complete the order?

Answer: 12/7 hours

Today

At his regular hourly rate, Don had estimated the labor cost of a repair job as $336, and he was paid that amount. However, the job took 4 hours longer than he had estimated, and, consequently, he earned $2/hour less than his regular hourly rate. What was the time Don had estimated for the job, in hours?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

Happy Investing,
Chris, Vyom, Ankit, Mitchell, Colin & Patrick

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