Good Morning! SpaceX kicked off a bond sale and disclosed a $100B-plus cash pile, but the market balked and the stock tumbled 16.4%, erasing most of its post-debut gains. Morgan Stanley is weighing a $1.3B office tower in Dallas, consolidating several businesses into 709,000 square feet. And TD is telling some staff it will use software to monitor their work to boost productivity.

Bain & Co. is using AI vibe coding to build software replicas for PE due diligence. Uber-backed e-bike firm Lime is seeking $180.9M in its IPO. And a comically small New Jersey home listed for $500,000 as the seller plays rock-bottom inventory.

Plus: PE owners are tapping a hot loan market to pay themselves, and why whey protein prices are soaring.

When was the last time you checked your home insurance rate? Get a side-by-side comparison today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Farewell to the Maestro

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman known as “the Maestro,” died yesterday at 100. For nearly two decades, he was the closest thing markets had to a central-bank oracle: a man whose carefully tortured sentences could move stocks, bonds and currencies before traders even finished parsing the verbs.

Greenspan ran the Fed from 1987 to 2006, serving under presidents from both parties and becoming one of the most powerful economic figures in modern American history. He got the job 69 days before Black Monday, when the Dow plunged 22.6% in a single day, then quickly established the Fed’s role as market backstop by promising liquidity and helping stabilize the system. That response helped create what critics later called the “Greenspan put,” the belief that if markets got ugly enough, the Fed would show up.

His most famous line came in 1996, when he wondered aloud whether “irrational exuberance” had inflated asset prices. Markets dropped, then promptly kept partying for four more years. It was classic Greenspan: perceptive, early, and vague enough that everyone could claim they understood him. He also turned “Fedspeak” into an art form, mastering the ability to answer questions in a way that sounded deeply technical while revealing almost nothing. Jerome Powell or Kevin Warsh may give cleaner press conferences, but Greenspan walked so modern Fed ambiguity could run.

The legacy is complicated. Supporters credit him with helping steer the U.S. through Black Monday, the Asian financial crisis, the Russian default, Long-Term Capital Management, 9/11, and the dot-com bust. Critics argue his low-rate policies and faith in markets helped inflate the housing bubble that blew up shortly after he handed the keys to Ben Bernanke. Greenspan later acknowledged that he underestimated the risks building in subprime lending and the financial system’s ability to police itself. For someone once treated like he could see around corners, the 2008 crisis was a reminder that even the Maestro could miss the biggest trend.

Takeaway: Greenspan was the last Fed chair who truly felt like the second-most powerful person in America. He was a jazz musician, a libertarian, a market whisperer, and eventually a symbol of both central-bank brilliance and central-bank hubris. He helped build the modern expectation that the Fed would rescue markets in a crisis, then lived long enough to see that expectation become one of the defining forces in finance. He was right about irrational exuberance, wrong about how far it could run, and honest enough later to admit the limits of his own worldview. The Maestro was 100, and there will not be another quite like him.

PRESENTED BY INSURIFY

Your Insurer Gave Itself a Raise You Never Approved

Premiums climbed 24% in three years* and now rival mortgage rates as the line item that makes or breaks a deal; nearly half of recent buyers and sellers hit an insurance snag, and one in five watched a sale collapse over it. However, most homeowners still renew on autopilot without checking the alternatives.

Insurify puts every homeowners policy side by side, so you can compare real quotes from trusted insurers, customize coverage, and make sure you’re not overpaying..

Compare your rate today.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• SpaceX launches first-ever bond sale after IPO (CNBC)

• SpaceX stock tumbles 16.4%, shaving off most IPO gains since debut (Yahoo Finance)

• Morgan Stanley plans $1.3 billion tower for Dallas expansion (BB)

• TD tells some employees it will use software to monitor their work in an effort to increase productivity (Globe and Mail)

• Bain tests software takeover targets by vibecoding AI replicas (FT)

• Uber-backed electric bike firm Lime seeks $180.9 million in IPO (BB)

• Comically small NJ home listed for $500K as seller tries to capitalize on extremely low inventory (NY Post)

• PE owners tap a hot loan market to pay themselves (BB)

• Protein demand is soaring, so are whey prices. (WSJ)

• Why the memory crunch is almost impossible to solve (WSJ)

• One investor's race to get $80 million out of private credit (WSJ)

• The budget airline model in the U.S. is running out of runway (CNBC)

• Secretive Wall Street powerhouse Jane Street seizes the AI spotlight (WSJ)

• NYC council intern claims she was dismissed from unpaid gig after demanding $32 per hour pay for her and peers (NY Post)

• Carlyle rethinks portfolio risk to emphasize weather insurance (BB)

• Meta taps new WhatsApp boss as part of $900 million investment (BB)

• Inflation has Gen Zers skipping dating and relationships (BB)

• BCG is among the biggest losers from Saudi Arabia's pullback on consultants (BB)

• Citi plans Baltic hub on NATO frontier, leading defense boom (BB)

• Affordable housing bill takes aim at private equity's role in single-family homes (CNBC)

• The private members' club boom, from London to New York (CNN)

• Nashville becomes another pro-business hub poised to siphon jobs away from NYC, biz leader warns (NY Post)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• Markets finished mixed, with weakness in technology stocks pushing the Nasdaq down 1.3%, while the Dow Jones and Russell 2000 moved higher.

• The Russell 2000 reached a new record high, continuing signs of broader market participation outside of large-cap technology.

• SpaceX fell more than 10% after announcing plans to issue significant debt to fund AI investments.

• Treasury yields continued to rise following last week's Fed meeting, with the 2-year Treasury yield reaching a new 2026 high of 4.23%.

• The U.S. dollar also climbed to a new 2026 high.

Iran Peace Talks Progress

• U.S. and Iran negotiators reportedly made progress toward a longer-term peace agreement following last week's interim deal.

• Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz continues to recover, although volumes remain below pre-conflict levels.

• WTI crude oil fell to roughly $75 per barrel, reflecting improving expectations for energy supply.

• Lower oil prices could help ease inflation pressures in the months ahead if sustained.

Fed and Inflation in Focus

• This week's key economic release will be the May PCE inflation report, the Fed's preferred inflation measure.

• Consensus forecasts call for headline PCE inflation of 4.1% and core PCE inflation of 3.4% year over year.

• Following last week's hawkish Fed meeting, markets are pricing in the possibility of additional policy tightening over the next year.

• Investors will be closely watching inflation data and Fed commentary for further clues on the interest-rate outlook.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Getty Images ($GETY) +90% after announcing a multi-year licensing deal with OpenAI to integrate its image library directly into ChatGPT’s search and discovery features.

  (+) Super Micro Computer ($SMCI) +16% because the company announced the delivery of its Data Center Building Block Solutions Blueprint.

• (–) Alphabet ($GOOGL) -5% after two key AI researchers departed for rivals.

Prediction Markets

• Bridgepoint and Triton have already walked away from deal talks with Spire (58% acquisition chance).

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

Private Dealmaking

• AbbVie agreed to buy Apogee Therapeutics, an anti-inflammatory biotech, for $10.9 billion

• CRH agreed to buy Arcosa, an infrastructure products maker, for $8.5 billion

• Nearfield Instruments, a Dutch maker of atomic force microscopes, raised $380 million

• Upscale AI, an AI networking infrastructure company, raised $190 million

• Bionyra Pharma, a biotech focused on immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, raised $165 million

• Twenty, a cyber warfare startup, raised $100 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

Man of the Futures

Description:
A fascinating memoir from Leo Melamed that chronicles the creation of modern futures markets and the transformation of global finance. The book follows Melamed's journey from immigrant and lawyer to one of the most influential figures in financial history, detailing how he helped pioneer financial futures, foreign currency futures, and many of the instruments that underpin today's capital markets. Blending personal history with financial innovation, it offers a front-row seat to the evolution of modern trading and risk management.

Book Length: 352 pages
Release Date: October 14, 2025

Ideal For:
Investors, traders, finance professionals, and anyone interested in the history of markets, financial innovation, and the people who reshaped global finance.

Financial innovation succeeds when it gives people better ways to manage uncertainty and seize opportunity.

DAILY VISUAL

Reddit’s Ads Business is Getting Bigger

PRESENTED BY DILIGENCESQUARED

How to Skip the $500k McKinsey Bill

Most funds skip commercial due diligence early on. Not because it wouldn’t help, but because at $500K to $1M a pop, they can’t afford to. So they wait until after initial IC and first-round bids, go deep on a few late-stage bets, and pray the thesis holds.

DiligenceSquared runs AI-native CDD at a fraction of that cost. Built by ex-Blackstone and BCG operators, it delivers investment-grade market and customer insight, so funds screen more targets earlier, reach conviction before the competition, and save the heavy spend for deals that already cleared the commercial bar.

Help your fund win deals faster. Book a demo today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Activity Trap

Motion is not progress, but it feels almost identical from the inside, which is why so many people stay perpetually busy and perpetually stuck.

Answering, attending, responding, optimizing. The day fills, the inbox empties, the sense of productivity is real, and somehow the things that actually matter keep not happening.

The cruel part is that activity is often a hiding place. It is far more comfortable to be busy than to sit with the harder, slower, more uncertain work that genuinely moves the needle. Busyness offers the feeling of effort without the risk of the real thing.

At the end of most busy days, the honest question is not whether you did a lot. It is whether any of it was the thing you were actually avoiding by doing everything else.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• Your brain can start changing after 2 minutes of meditation

• The philosophy of the out-of-office email

• When competence becomes a liability

• Why people quit their jobs

• When purpose backfires 

• Build 3 statement models, DCFs and LBOs in 10 minutes**

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

📣 Partner With Us: Get in front of an audience of over 1 million finance professionals, business leaders, and policy influencers. Submit a partnership inquiry.

📊 Wall Street Comp & Culture Data: Get the most detailed comp, carry, and culture insights across 1000+ Wall Street firms. Explore the data.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🧢 Wall Street Shop: Explore our collection of finance-themed apparel and merchandise. Visit the shop.

📬 Deals Newsletter – Buysiders: A curated roundup of major M&A, private equity, and VC activity. Plus access to private deal flow. Subscribe here.