Summers Steps Back

Larry Summers is stepping back from public roles after the Epstein backlash.

November 18, 2025

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 fall as S&P breaches 50-day average

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

  • Technical Trip: Unexpected Interview Question with Moelis

  • Lesson from the Library: Discover how VCs pick winners, fund innovation, and turn bold ideas into billion-dollar exits.

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

📉 Banana Bits

Your upper hand

In a highly competitive market, deep knowledge of deal terms trends can be a powerful tool in moving to the next level. Build that knowledge with the 2025 SRS Acquiom M&A Deal Terms Study. 

This isn’t a regurgitation of publicly available information or a lengthy list of things you and your boss(es) already know. No, every data point and insight comes from SRS Acquiom, the private-target M&A expert. This data draws on more than 2,200 private-target deals, valued at more than $505 billion, that closed between 2019 and 2024. This is invaluable deal terms intelligence from a proprietary private-target dataset you won’t find elsewhere. 

Trends in valuations and earnouts, impacts of heightened due diligence, the prevalence of walk-away indemnity structures: It’s all here. So, if you’re looking for a ticket to knowing what’s market on private target deals—the kind of stuff that makes your clients and bosses take notice—this is the closest you’re going to get. 

Market Recap

Will There Be More Downside for S&P500?

This week will be critical for investors as we are ahead of two major pillars that could shake up the market again. 

Nvidia’s earnings and the job report. This will serve as a prospect for the artificial intelligence industry and the Federal Reserve rate cuts. The S&P 500 slid almost 1%—breaching a technical mark seen by many as a gateway to more losses. 

The gauge snapped 138 sessions during which it held above the 50-day moving average, its second-longest stretch this century.

Historically, when the S&P 500 breaches its 50-day moving average after such a lengthy stretch, it signals further short-term losses. The S&P 500 has suffered an average maximum loss of 1.3% two weeks after such a streak ends.

What's Ripe

E.W. Scripps Co. (SSP) 39.9%

  • SSP jumped 40% to $4.2 after Sinclair built a stake of 8.2% in the local TV broadcaster and said it was discussing a potential merger.

Quantum Computing Inc. (QUBT) 8.5%

  • The company posted $384,000 in revenue in the third quarter, up from $101,000 in the same period last year.

  • The company also swung to a profit of $2.4 million in the period, compared with a year-earlier loss of $5.7 million.

What's Rotten

XPeng Inc. ADR (XPEV) 10.3%

  • XPEV fell 10.3% after the Chinese electric-vehicle maker posted a third-quarter per-share loss of 1 cent from sales of $2.9 billion. It reported a loss of 150 million yuan ($20 million) on sales of ¥20.38 billion.

  • XPeng said it delivered 116,007 vehicles in the third quarter, slightly above the midpoint of its previous guidance of 113,000 to 118,000.

Dell Technologies Inc. (DELL) 8.4%

  • DELL fell 8.4% to $122.48 as Morgan Stanley downgraded shares to Underweight from Overweight and reduced the price target to $110 from $144.

  • A surge in the price of memory drives—a component in Dell's products, such as servers and PCs—will weigh on the technology company’s margins, the firm argued.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Moelis

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

📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Venture Capital: From Idea to IPO

Discover how VCs pick winners, fund innovation, and turn bold ideas into billion-dollar exits.

🌟 WSO Academy Q4 Update

Automatic Session Notes + Key Takeaways Emails

When a student’s mentor uploads a session recording, they’ll now receive a short follow-up email summarizing:

  •  ✅ Key takeaways from the session

  •  ✅ Action items / next steps

  •  ✅ Links to any resources mentioned

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

A certain fruit stand sold apples for $0.70 each and bananas for $0.50 each. If a customer purchased both apples and bananas from the stand for a total of $6.30, what total number of apples and bananas did the customer purchase?

Answer: 11

Today

In the xy-plane, what is the slope of the line with equation 3x + 7y = 9?

❝

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.

Benjamin Franklin

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