Silver banana goes to…

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: Stocks slipped from the Santa Rally

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

• Technical Trip: Interview Question with Ares

• Lesson from the Library: Model acquisitions, cash flows, returns, and full deal structures like a real estate pro.

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

• The Daily Poll: See how you stack up

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• Silver steadied after suffering its sharpest one-day drop in over five years.

• Chinese stocks are headed for their best year since 2017 as the rally broadens.

• Trump said he may still fire Powell as the Fed chair decision approaches.

• Russia has no plans to attack NATO, according to Estonia’s spy chief.

• Wall Street analysts are now unanimously betting on a 2026 stock rally.

• China’s EV exports surged 87% year-on-year in November.

• Trump warned Iran of severe retaliation if it moves toward building weapons.

Market Recap

Stocks Slipped From The Santa Rally

While investors are in a good mood to spend their holiday breaks, the stock market might not be aligned.

U.S. stocks slipped for a second straight day as traders trimmed bets on tech megacaps before the end of the year. Volatility gripped precious metals as silver retreated after touching a record high.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3%, with shares of Tesla Inc., Nvidia Corp., and Meta Platforms among the Big Tech decliners. The Nasdaq 100 slid 0.5%. In U.S. government bonds, the yield on 10-year Treasuries edged lower to 4.11%.

The S&P 500 is up 17.4% year-to-date, defying expectations of persistent tariff-fueled weakness even as it underperformed many global peers.

What's Ripe

Praxis Precision Medicines Inc. (PRAX) 13.3%

• The genetic neuroscience company said the Food and Drug Administration had granted breakthrough therapy designation for ulixacaltamide, a treatment for patients with essential tremor.

• The designation will expedite development and regulatory review, the company said.

DigitalBridge Group Inc. (DBRG) 9.6%

• DBRG climbed 9.6% to $15.26 after Japan’s SoftBank Group announced it was buying the data-center investment firm for a total enterprise value of roughly $4 billion, or $16 a share in cash.

• DigitalBridge shares rose as much as 35% in premarket trading before the deal was announced.

What's Rotten

Newmont Corp. (NEM) 5.6%

• NEM tumbled 5.6%, making it the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500, as shares of the world’s largest gold miner followed the prices of precious metals lower. Gold futures were down 4.5%.

Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (FCX) 2.9%

• FCX, a miner of gold and copper, fell 2.9%. Silver prices hit an all-time high in overnight trading before pulling back sharply.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Ares

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

📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Master Real Estate Modeling: Build Deals from the Ground Up

Model acquisitions, cash flows, returns, and full deal structures like a real estate pro.

🎓 Check out the course

🌟 WSO Academy Q4 Update

🎤 WSO Academy Speaker Series

We’ve now hosted four Speaker Series events with great guests across Investment Banking, Hedge Funds, and Asset/Wealth Management, and plenty more are in the works. The students can watch these past events on their dashboard:

• Scott L. Bok – Chairman & CEO of Greenhill & Co.

• Michael Harris – Vice Chairman & Global Head of Capital Markets at the New York Stock Exchange

• Zach Levenick – Founder, THG Securities Advisors

• John Morgan – Chief Investment Officer, Morgan Capital Family Office

Learn about WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• Vietnam’s GSM is weighing an overseas IPO at a potential $20B valuation.

• Insilico rose in its Hong Kong debut after a $293M IPO.

• China’s revival is boosting confidence in Asia’s M&A outlook for 2026.

• Meta is buying startup Manus to strengthen its AI agent push.

• Airbus landed $8B in aircraft orders from Chinese airlines.

• SoftBank agreed to buy DigitalBridge in a $3B data-center deal.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

What’s Japan risking most if it keeps hiking?

Yen volatility: 30.4% // Growth slowdown: 26.1% // Bond market stress: 32.6% // Nothing dramatic: 10.9%

Student Success Corner

From Italy to Saudi Arabia: Claudio’s Global Finance Journey & Lessons in Mentorship

👉 Check out more on WSO YouTube

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

A furniture dealer purchased a desk for $150 and then set the selling price equal to the purchase price plus a markup that was 40 percent of the selling price. If the dealer sold the desk at the selling price, what was the amount of the dealer’s gross profit from the purchase and the sale of the desk?

Answer: $100

Today

If x is the product of the integers from 1 to 150, inclusive, and (5)^y is a factor of x, what is the greatest possible value of y?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

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

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