Your Daily Dose of Market & Career Clarity

📬 Delivered to 150,000+ ambitious readers

Silver banana goes to…

Get a Top Job Offer, Guaranteed (or tuition is free) | Apply Here

🎯 In this issue:

• Banana Bits: Finance headlines that actually matter

• Market Summary: Stock market surge with AI appetite back on track

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

• Technical Trip: Interview Question with Lazard

• Lesson from the Library: Learn the frameworks and thinking styles that help you ace every case.

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

• The Daily Poll: See how you stack up

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• Metals paused after China moved to curb high-frequency trading.

• Corporate bond yields fell to their lowest since 2007 as the economy held up.

• Goldman Sachs reclaimed the top spot on Wall Street’s revenue leaderboard.

• Goldman’s CEO is exploring how banks could enter prediction markets.

• The U.S. and Taiwan reached an agreement on tariffs and chip investments.

• Wall Street cut more jobs last year than at any time since 2016.

• Canada’s TSX crossed 33,000 as tech stocks surged, edging closer to the S&P 500 in 2026.

Market News

Stock Market Surge with AI Appetite Back on Track

Wall Street seems to question its “rotation” after TSMC’s surprise results gave investors optimism for the sector’s future.

A gauge of chipmakers hit all-time highs as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Asia’s most valuable company, assuaged concerns about the sustainability of current data-center spending.

NVIDIA Corp. jumped over 2%, and ASML Holding NV notched a record. This gave the S&P 500 a boost, with the index rising 0.3%. A gauge of AI companies jumped 1.8% with TSMC's surprise revenue jump, and Taiwan and U.S. tariff and investment initiatives.

Small-cap stocks continue to reap gains with the Russell 2000 beating the S&P 500 for 10 consecutive days.

On the other hand, the 10-year Treasury rose 4 basis points to 4.17%. Commodities also got a beating after Trump planned to hold off its attack on Iran. Both oil and silver sank in Thursday's trading.

What's Ripe

Talen Energy Corp. (TLN) 11.8%

• TLN jumped 12%. The energy-infrastructure company landed a roughly $6.5 billion deal with Energy Capital Partners to acquire three power plants, saying the deal would “enhance” its data-center offerings.

Sandisk Corp. (SNDK) 5.5%

• SNDK continued to surge, rising 5.5% after a 1000% run.

• The run came after its spin-off from Western Digital. Barclays analyst Tom O’Malley reiterated an Equal Weight rating and boosted his price target on the stock to $385 from $220 on Thursday.

What's Rotten

Coinbase Global Inc. (Coin) 6.5%

• Coin fell 6.5% after the Senate Banking Committee postponed a hearing on a key Cryptocurrency Bill on Wednesday when Coinbase pulled its support.

Spotify Technology (SPOT) 4.0%

• The music streaming giant slipped 4% after announcing plans to raise its subscription fee to $12.99, a $12 annual increase.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from Lazard

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

📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Consulting Case Interview Course: Crack the Consulting Playbook

Learn the frameworks and thinking styles that help you ace every case.

🎓 Check out the course

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• The studio behind Dune sold a stake to Japan’s TBS at a $4B valuation.

• Industrials firm Madison Air is said to be lining up a $2B-plus IPO.

• AI startup Replit rolled out a new mobile app coding feature.

• Tom Lee’s Bitmine invested $200M in YouTube star MrBeast.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

Starting earnings season at record levels sets the bar:

Too high: 47.0% // Just right: 25.8% // Easy to clear: 9.1% // Irrelevant: 18.1%

Student Success Corner

👉 Are you next? Find out with WSO Academy

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

If n = (33)^ 43 + (43)^ 33, what is the units digit of n?

Answer: 0

Today

During a trip, Francine traveled x percent of the total distance at an average speed of 40 miles per hour and the rest of the distance at an average speed of 60 miles per hour. In terms of x, what was Francine’s average speed for the entire trip?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

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

ADVERTISE // WSO ALPHA // ACADEMY // COURSES // LEGAL