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 and gold rally as Santa hopes build

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

• Technical Trip: Interview Question with Morgan Stanley

• Lesson from the Library: Build DCF and comps models that translate assumptions into real-world value.

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

• The Daily Poll: See how you stack up

Market Snapshot

📉 Banana Bits

• Trump doubled down on his push for U.S. control over Greenland.

• Gold notched its 50th daily record as rate-cut bets piled up.

• Argentina’s economy grew less than expected ahead of midterms.

• Wells Fargo plans to enter the massive options clearing market.

• Larry Ellison pledged $40B to support a Warner Bros. bid.

• Singapore inflation held steady at 1.2% in November.

• JPMorgan is exploring cr*pto trading for institutional clients.

Market Recap

It is What Investors are Ho–Ho-Hoping For

This week’s shortened trading week gives investors hope for a Santa Rally amid a broad advance that saw a continuation of the bullish momentum on Wall Street.

Oil and gold rallied as the dollar fell. Equities are currently in the green territory after erasing their December losses, with the S&P 500 set for an eighth straight up month, the longest winning run since 2018.

Almost 400 of its shares rose on Monday as the benchmark approached a record. Tesla Inc. and Nvidia Corp. led megacaps higher. A gauge of smaller firms climbed 1.2%.

On the other hand, we see commodities having their own rally with gold and silver prices jumping to fresh highs amid heightened geopolitical tensions, as the U.S. pursued another tanker transporting oil from Venezuela.

Despite record prices, gold has strong prospects to soar further in 2026, as central bank holdings remain well above historical levels and untapped demand from Western investors remains.

What's Ripe

UniFirst Corp. (UNF) 16.2%

• UNF jumped 16% to $197.64 after Cintas submitted another offer to acquire the smaller uniform supplier for $275 a share or roughly $5.2 billion.

Rocket Lab Corp. (RKLB) 10.0%

• RKLB gained 10% after the U.S. Space Development Agency on Friday awarded the company an agreement worth up to $805 million to provide 18 missile warning, tracking, and defense satellites

• Rocket Lab said the agreement was its largest single contract to date.

What's Rotten

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (DJT) 10.4%

• DJT declined 10% after surging more than 50% last week following a merger agreement with nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies.

Dominion Energy Inc (D) 3.7%

• Dominion Energy declined 3.7% after the Trump administration paused the leases for all large-scale offshore wind projects under construction in the U.S. Dominion’s wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., was one of five leases paused by the Department of the Interior.

• The department cited the need to assess how to mitigate national security risks, such as the potential for radar interference. In a statement, Dominion argued that stopping the project would trigger energy inflation, imperil jobs, and threaten grid reliability for military installations in coastal Virginia.

🧠 Technical Trip

Interview Q&A from UBS

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

📚 Lesson from the Library

🎥 Valuation Modeling Course: Build Models That Price Reality

Build DCF and comps models that translate assumptions into real-world value.

🎓 Check out the course

🌟 WSO Academy Q4 Update

📈 Boutique Investment Banking Internship

We’ve now placed 5 students in various boutique IB roles. As a reminder, we’ve partnered with our banking network to provide students with the opportunity to apply for an internship at one of our boutique investment banks.

Learn about WSO Academy

🦈 Deal Dispatch

M&A, IPOs, And Other Notable Transactions

• JPMorgan topped India’s ECM league tables for the first time since 2020.

• EA shareholders approved a $55B sale to Saudi-backed buyers.

• Coinbase bought The Clearing Company to expand prediction markets.

• FanDuel launched a new prediction markets app to chase rivals.

• Dealmakers say the M&A boom could run well into 2026.

• Netflix refinanced part of its $59B bridge loan tied to the Warner deal.

📊The Daily Poll

Previous Poll:

U.S. consumer sentiment is still sad. What's your current spending vibe?

Cutting corners: 13.9% // Side-eyeing prices: 41.7% // Spending anyway: 25.0% // Already broke: 19.4%

Student Success Corner

From Brazil to Wall Street: Arthur’s Journey Through Wharton, Banking, and Finding Purpose

👉 Check out more on WSO YouTube

Banana Brain Teaser

Previous

When a certain tree was first planted, it was 4 feet tall, and the height of the tree increased by a constant amount each year for the next 6 years. At the end of the 6th year, the tree was 1/5 taller than it was at the end of the 4th year. By how many feet did the height of the tree increase each year?

Answer: 2/3

Today

There are 8 books on a shelf, of which 2 are paperbacks, and 6 are hardbacks. How many possible selections of 4 books from this shelf include at least one paperback?

How Would You Rate Today's Peel?

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

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