Good Morning! Investors are expecting more rate hikes this year, with a 55% chance of one as soon as next month. The NBA is amending its PE policy to allow a firm and its executives to invest in a franchise at the same time, to accommodate the new Lakers deal. And global M&A is on track to snap a six-quarter streak above $1 trillion, with Q3 volume down 49% and deal count down 39%.

The uber-rich and the not-quite-rich-enough are fighting over low-flying Hamptons helicopters. On signed Kylian Mbappé to take on Nike and Adidas in football. And Anthropic is expected to top $100 billion in annualized revenue ahead of an IPO.

Plus: How a Goldman M&A banker helped bring the Olympics to LA, why Fort Lauderdale is booming with luxury condos and corporate tenants as Miami runs out of space, and the science of emotional regulation.

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SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Buffett Bows Out

It was a legendary 60+ year run, but Warren Buffett officially stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway on Friday. And after he stepped down as CEO last year, it’s officially Buffett’s final departure from the company he turned into a $1 trillion-plus conglomerate.

Buffett, 96, is keeping it close in the family and he’ll be replaced as chairman by his son Howard. The transition comes less than a year after handing the CEO job to Greg Abel. Buffett will still remain on Berkshire's board as chairman emeritus and said he still plans to offer his "judgment and perspective" when asked. But after more than six decades running Berkshire, the succession plan is finally complete. "Father Time always wins," Buffett wrote to shareholders. "He has, however, been generous with me."

Howard's appointment has also been in the works for years, and his job is intentionally pretty narrow. Abel runs Berkshire and makes the capital-allocation decisions, and Howard, who has served on Berkshire's board since 1993, is there largely to protect the culture his father spent decades building. Buffett described his son as "a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against." 

And Berkshire does have a unique culture that Howard will be in charge of owning. Berkshire owns everything from Geico and BNSF Railway to utilities, manufacturers, and retailers alongside a massive stock portfolio, yet operates with a tiny Omaha headquarters and gives its businesses enormous autonomy. For decades, the glue holding that strange collection together was Buffett himself. But now the company is selling investors on the idea that Abel can run the machine while Howard makes sure nobody starts messing with what made it work in the first place.

Investors are already getting an early look at Berkshire without Buffett at the controls, and so far the market hasn't exactly handed out a succession premium. Berkshire shares are up roughly 1% this year versus about 12% for the S&P 500, and the company has slightly trailed the index over the past decade. That's a huge change from the Buffett era as a whole: since 1965, Berkshire has beaten the S&P 500 by nearly 10 percentage points annually.

Takeaway: There was never going to be another Warren Buffett, so Berkshire isn't really trying to find one. Abel runs the company, Howard protects the culture and Buffett will remain nearby without being the guy in charge. After more than six decades with Buffett at the top, Berkshire's succession plan is no longer a plan; it’s officially the company investors own. Happy Retirement 🐐.

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HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Wall Street thinks the stock market can handle a few hikes (Axios)

• 55% chance of a Fed hike in October (Kalshi)

• NBA paves way for Lakers deal with private equity policy change (BB)

• Dealmaking activity is diving in Q3 (Axios)

• The class war raging over low-flying helicopters headed to the Hamptons (WSJ)

• Mbappé signs for On's push into football in blow for Nike (BB)

• Anthropic's annualized revenue to top $100 billion in 2026, NYT says (BB)

• A Goldman M&A banker helped bring the Olympics to Los Angeles (BB)

• Fort Lauderdale real estate boom draws New York developers to Florida (BB)

• Apollo sells $400 million UK homebuilder stake to Daiwa House (BB)

• Goldman's Snider says fears of US earnings bubble are misplaced (BB)

• AI trade rebound sparks flurry of unusually bullish options activity (CNBC)

• Blackstone alumni forge hybrid capital challenger (BB)

• How to tell whether a plunging stock will keep plunging (WSJ)

• The super donor quarterbacking Michigan sports (WSJ)

• Hackers used Anthropic's Claude to break into OpenAI (WSJ)

• Fed's Bowman says don't blame social media for SVB's bank run (WSJ)

• Blackstone lands loan for data center cooling firm acquisition (BB)

• JPMorgan, Citigroup CEOs Dimon, Fraser set to attend Trump's state dinner for China's Xi (CNBC)

• Germany's M&A boom is gathering strength (BB)

• Dodgers owner Mark Walter named in fraud lawsuit (NY Post)

• Private equity turns to financial engineering to lure insurance billions (FT)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• The Nasdaq rose, led by semiconductors, while the Dow slipped slightly following the post-Fed rally.

• The Bank of Japan raised rates a quarter point to 1.25%, its highest since 1995, though the yen weakened on two dissenting votes.

• The S&P 500 was little changed for the week as gains in communication services, healthcare, and technology offset weakness in utilities and financials.

Economic Data

• Long-term yields stabilized near multi-year highs after the Fed's first hike since 2023, with officials signaling one more hike this year.

• The Fed's base case is a mid-cycle adjustment, unwinding last year's cuts while leaving 2024 cuts in place.

• The oil-yield correlation has strengthened to its highest level since 2020 amid Middle East-driven inflation.

Calendar

• President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet September 24, Xi's first U.S. trip since 2023, expected to extend the trade truce set to expire in November.

• Trump is also expected to meet Gulf state leaders to discuss the Iran conflict.

• The preliminary U.S. PMI is due Wednesday in an otherwise quiet economic week.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Strategy ($MSTR) +16% after the House advanced the American Reserve Modernization Act, fueling a rally in bitcoin.

• (+) Sandisk ($SNDK) +11% because the stock will be added to the S&P 100 index effective September 21.

  (–) Netflix ($NFLX) -5% after Wells Fargo slashed Netflix to Underweight with a $57 target, citing softening engagement.

Prediction Markets

• In honor of last week’s rate hike, how many will we have this year?

• Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

• Crusoe, a data center developer, raised $3.9 billion

• Emulate, a British AI lab, is raising up to $700 million

• Angle Health, a healthcare benefits platform, raised $600 million

• ElevenLabs, an AI audio startup, is raising more than $500 million

• Fever, the owner of live entertainment ticketing platform Dice, raised $250 million

• Nex, a gaming console maker, raised $150 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

Pick Stocks That Go Up

Description:
Danial Jiwani lays out 12 principles for identifying companies with the potential to generate exceptional long-term returns. Rather than focusing primarily on market timing or short-term price movements, Jiwani emphasizes business quality, cash flow, industry selection, valuation, and disciplined research. He draws lessons from successful investors and uses examples from companies such as Apple, Meta, and Amazon to illustrate how investors can identify businesses capable of compounding significantly over time. A recurring theme is that stock-market wealth creation is highly concentrated, meaning investors need to be selective about the companies they own. The book presents a straightforward framework for researching individual stocks and making investment decisions without getting distracted by market hype.

Book Length: 274 pages
Release Date: August 1, 2025

Ideal For:
Individual investors, stock pickers, value investors, and anyone looking to develop a more systematic approach to fundamental analysis, cash-flow investing, industry selection, and long-term stock picking.

“Exceptional investment returns usually come from owning exceptional businesses, not from constantly trying to predict the market.”

DAILY VISUAL

Not Tech, Not Wall Street

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DAILY ACUMEN

Just Enough

Jim Simons left a career as a celebrated mathematician and Cold War codebreaker to start a hedge fund built entirely on statistics, hiring physicists and codebreakers instead of traditional Wall Street analysts. His flagship Medallion Fund went on to average around 66 percent gross annual returns from 1988 to 2018, a record no other fund in history has come close to matching.

The strange part is how thin the actual edge was. One of the firm's own leaders once said the fund was only right on about 50.75 percent of its trades, barely better than a coin flip. What made that sliver of an edge worth tens of billions of dollars was volume, discipline, and never letting a single trade's outcome carry any emotional weight.

The lesson runs against most people's instinct about what winning looks like. You do not need to be right most of the time. You need a real, repeatable edge, applied at scale, with the discipline to keep applying it exactly the same way on the boring days as the terrifying ones.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• Check your net worth and fix your spending habits*

• Running can be good for osteoarthritis

• The science of emotional regulation

• The leadership habit that could be costing you new recruits

• Steve Jobs on the power of perseverance 

• What is 'career minimalism' and what are the potential rewards and risks?

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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