Good Morning! Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen says we’ve officially achieved a soft landing. The U.S. added 2.7 million jobs in 2023 - but Wall Street’s finally sobering up from December’s rally. You might not want to ever take the window seat again after an emergency door ripped off an Alaskan Air flight in-air - and Boeing just grounded over 170 737 Max 9s after the event. Plus how to game life with strategic thinking, and a Goldman Sachs exec on the make-or-break interview soft skill you gotta have.

Investing? Danelfin’s AI investment tool ranks winning stocks with a 94% win rate. See which stocks scored 10/10 here.

CLICK THIS TO REMAIN A SUBSCRIBER

Clicking on newsletter links is the only way for us to know you are reading (and enjoying) Short Squeez. If you don’t click by next month, you will stop receiving this newsletter.

Click here to let us know that you’re still an active subscriber. Thanks!

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

Ackman Wages War

It’s been a wild couple of weeks for Bill Ackman. The billionaire hedge fund manager used corporate raider techniques straight out of Barbarians at the Gate to push out Claudine Gay, president of his alma mater, Harvard. And now he’s aiming to do the same thing and cancel Business Insider after they decided to go after his family.

Ackman made his name as an aggressive activist investor - dialing up the pressure and demanding change. Oftentimes, Ackman ousted the management or board of companies he invested in. 

But following the Congressional antisemitism hearing, Ackman has switched his activism to college campuses, calling for sweeping changes within elite academia, including the ousting of Harvard's president, board of trustees, and the DEI office.

Ultimately last Tuesday, Gay stepped down after journalists uncovered plagiarism allegations. But that same week? Business Insider dropped a hit piece - accusing Ackman’s wife (Neri Oxman) of plagiarizing her PhD dissertation.

In response, Ackman went full Bobby Axelrod, and waged war against those that attacked his wife.

He says he'll launch a review of every single journalist and faculty member at Business Insider and MIT, respectively.

He even called out Business Insider owners (KKR through Axel Springer) and Mike Bloomberg in one of his long tweet rants since the article broke.

Takeaway: Business Insider has triggered a powerful activist investor, who clearly has the time, resources, and clout to do some serious damage. And it’s a good lesson - don’t attack the families of billionaires unprovoked unless you’re ready for some serious smoke.

_{SPONSORED BY DANELFIN}

This AI Stock Picker Has A ~94% Win Rate

Danelfin, named “Best Financial Research Company” at the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards, is putting the odds in your favor with its AI stock picker–for free.

Tech once reserved for hedge funds and the elite, Danelfin’s AI rates the probability of beating the market over the next 3 months, with up to a 94% win rate.

Stocks labeled “Strong Buy” have outperformed the market every year by an impressive +20.08% on average since 2017.

What’s more, the Danelfin Best Stocks strategy delivered a +191% return between Jan. 3, 2017, and Aug. 15, 2023, crushing the S&P 500’s +118% return in that time.

What are you waiting for? See which stocks are rated 10/10 for FREE!

_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Big Tech layoffs shattered industry, worker confidence (Axios)

• FAA grounded over 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s after Alaskan Air accident (CNBC)

• Yellen declares that the U.S. economy has achieved a soft landing (YF)

• How Stanley turned an 110-year-old water bottle into $750 million/year business (CNBC)

• Unpacking December job report’s mixed signals (Axios)

• Private equity funds are borrowing against themselves, with help from insurers (BB)

• David Tepper’s $2 billion hedge fund pay day marred by NFL meltdown (BB)

• Hedge funds for masses delivered mediocre returns, high costs (WSJ)

• Wall Street sobers up after December’s rally (NYT)

• Do young people get compound interest? (CNBC)

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks closed higher, but the Nasdaq ended the week down 4%.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Peloton ($PTON) +10% because the TikTok deal is drawing options traders to the stock.

• (–) Agilon Health ($AGW) -29% after the company’s CFO stepped down.

• (–) Medical Properties Trust ($MPW) -29% because the REIT is trying to recover unpaid rent from its largest tenant.

Private Dealmaking

• Synopsys in talks to acquire software company Ansys for $35 billion

• Southwestern, Chesapeake near $17 billion merger

• Brookfield Asset Management bought the Indian operations of American Tower Corp. for $2.5 billion

• Devoted Health, a health insurance startup, raised $175 million

• Bumper, an auto repair financing company, raised $48 million

• Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors, raised $24 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

The Anxious Investor

The human brain is ill-suited to making wise investment decisions. We are overconfident in our own knowledge and hunches, terrible at assessing risk, and prone to chasing financial thrills rather than measured long-term goals.

Making matters worse, periods of severe market turbulence—whether the dotcom bubble of the late 90’s, the Great Recession a decade later, or the brief, vertiginous COVID crash of 2020—bring out our most irrational selves, at the exact moment when the consequences for investment mistakes are most severe.

Scott Nations has spent his career studying market volatility. His firm, Nations Indexes, is the world’s leading independent developer of volatility and option-enhanced indexes. In The Anxious Investor, he teaches readers how to understand markets, master their own fear, and make the most of their money.

Drawing upon cutting-edge research in behavioral psychology, Nations shows that the secrets to excellent investing lie in mastering the quirks of human psychology.

How are some investors able to make prudent decisions under pressure, while others rely on gut instinct to disastrous effect? How can we prepare for a market crash before it happens? And what can help us stay the course when the waters get choppy?

Using the stories of three infamous market bubbles as his backdrop, Nations offers readers history’s hard-earned lessons about greed, volatility, and value.

“A revelatory new guide to becoming a smarter investor, drawing upon behavioral psychology, economic modeling, and market history to offer practical advice for reaching your financial goals.”

_{DAILY VISUAL}

Wage Growth is Beating Inflation

Share of workers receiving raises above inflation

_{SPONSORED BY CASKX}

Tap The Whiskey Market (Before Everyone Else)

Almost every profitable investment in history foreshadowed its potential before moonshotting in value.

Exhibit A: All across Kentucky, rickhouses are being built at record speeds to keep up with the booming whiskey industry.

And even with 10 million barrels aging at this moment, the demand is still eclipsing the supply.

With CaskX, you can take advantage and invest in expertly-selected whiskey barrels from American distilleries. 

This week only, CaskX is giving Short Squeez readers early access to a range of new offerings that won’t last long. 

Click here to skip the line in the red-hot whiskey market.

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Beliefs

“Your willingness to believe something is influenced by how much you want and need it to be true.

If you tell me you’ve found an easy way to double my money in a week, I’m not going to believe you by default.

But if I desperately owed someone money next month that I don’t have, I would listen. And if my children were starving and my only hope for their survival was doubling my money next week, I would hang on to your every word.

The majority of lottery tickets are purchased by the lowest-income Americans. Why? I have a theory: The lowest-income Americans overestimate their odds of winning because when you feel trapped in poverty-stricken stagnation you desperately need to believe that you can buy a ticket out of your situation in order to maintain a certain level of functioning optimism.

That’s a stark example, but the same force influences the beliefs of everyone.

There is a thing in psychology called depressive realism, which is the idea that depressed people make more accurate predictions of the world because they are more attuned to how fragile, competitive, and ruthless life can be.

But they are a minority. Most of us cling to the opposite, carrying around comforting delusions that guide our beliefs.

A lot of decisions are statistically wrong but support the incentives of the person making them – a good thing to remember when analyzing the predictions you use to justify your own actions. 

Another McRaney quote fits well here: “Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly like being right.”

Source: Morgan Housel

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• Tackle your biggest projects with a daily power hour

• Use strategic thinking to create the life you want

• Goldman Sachs exec shares the most important interview soft skill

• 8 essential leadership tips for 2024

• How to get promoted and thrive at work by eating the frog

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day