Good Morning! Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Americans set a record with Black Friday spending and holiday discounts are set to be even bigger this year. Heading into the final month of the year, investors are hungry for risk - and they’re holding record cash sums. Ken Griffin wants to buy the Miami Dolphins. And he’s getting in at a good time with funflation driving sports tickets up 25%.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

Goldman's Million-Dollar Golfer

For those born in the '90s and curious about who tops the earnings chart at Goldman Sachs for your era, you might be surprised.

It's not a financier or a corporate mogul, but rather the professional golfer Patrick Cantlay. Goldman Sachs has been teeing up payments of no less than $1.1 million annually for Cantlay since the year 2020.

It’s almost like Cantlay has the same exact job responsibilities and salary as your MD, who doesn’t know how to convert a word document into a pdf, but is out golfing 3x a week.

Goldman announced Cantlay’s salary last week. They hired him to wear a “Marcus by Goldman Sachs” hat to drum up support for the bank’s consumer banking division. But as the bank walks back from its consumer ambitions, it won’t renew Cantlay’s contract.

And at the same time, Goldman Sachs has been playing the frugal card lately. Bonuses have been considerably lower than street pay because of the ‘Goldman discount’ - analysts are willing to take less money in exchange for the value of having Goldman on their resume. 

But comp season at 200 West was especially brutal last year - some bankers received a $10k bonus for their 110 hours / week of service.

Takeaway: Turns out there’s more than one path to making millions at Goldman before you’re 30 (and doesn’t have to be adjusting EBITDA in the trenches). In any case, if Goldman would like to sponsor Short Squeez for $1.1 million per year, please reach out. Oh and I wish I took golfing lessons.

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_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Americans set a record on Black Friday spend (Axios)

• Investors are hungry for risk and holding record cash sums (WSJ)

• Ken Griffin wants to buy the Miami Dolphins (BB)

• Funflation drives sport event ticket prices up 25% (CNBC)

• 5 takeaways from America’s biggest crypto crackdown in history (CNN)

• Tech execs say AI is giving Big Tech inordinate power (CNBC)

• AI blowback angst grips ESG (YF)

• How house hacking is helping Gen-Z and millennials become homeowners (CNBC)

• How a billionaire banker is helping elite U.S. colleges recruit new talent (BB)

• OpenAI researchers warned board of AI breakthrough ahead of CEO ouster (Reuters)

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks closed higher ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) iRobot ($IRBT) +39% because Amazon will win regulatory approval to acquire it for $1.4 billion.

• (+) Coinbase ($COIN) +6% after Binance settled legal woes with the Feds.

• (–) Nvidia ($NVDA) -2% after delaying a new AI chip that would comply with U.S. export regulations.

Private Dealmaking

• Novo Nordisk invests $2.3 billion in France to boost output

• Rithm Capital closes Sculptor buyout for $719 million

• Matsmart-Motatos, a Swiss online grocer, raised $44 million

• Newheat, a renewable heating solutions provider, raised $33 million

• On Target Laboratories, a cancer treatment developer, raised $30 million

• Greater Good, a primary care provider for seniors, raised $20 million

For more PE & VC deals, subscribe to Buysiders.

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

Partnering

It's not their technical skills or experiences that matter most, it is their ability to partner: to forge deep connections. As the President and founding CEO of Virgin Unite and the co-founder of Plus Wonder, Jean Oelwang has had a ringside seat to remarkable people and has learned how they build deep business and personal relationships.

She has spent over 15 years working with some of the world's greatest partnerships like Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond and Leah Tutu, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Ben and Jerry, and the cofounders of AirBnB, all of whom, due to their partnerships, learned to become better versions of themselves, which directly multiplied their positive impact on the world.

In Partnering, Oelwang illuminates the core principles that weaves through sixty extraordinary partnerships and collaborations. Remarkably, these six elegant principles are common to meaningful partnerships of all types: friends, family, business, and romantic. They are also at the center of most great human collaborations, like closing the ozone hole and ending apartheid in South Africa.

In this book you'll find daily rituals for staying connected, practical tools for disagreeing respectfully, virtues that deepen your relationship, and a blueprint for expanding small partnerships into large-scale collaborations.

Partnering is a refreshing antidote to a disconnected and divided world. It is the answer to how we can increase depth and meaning in all of our most important relationships.

“Some of the most successful people in the world all have a secret power - their partnerships.”

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• When and why employee curiosity annoys managers

• How to refine your executive presence

• 9 non-negotiables for a long, happy life

• 10 everyday habits to boost your mental toughness

• How to get more done

_{DAILY VISUAL}

US Food Waste, by Sector

_{SPONSORED BY FACET}

What’s Your Money Style?

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1. Your Thinking Style – Your relationship with financial information.

2. Your Feeling Style – Your emotional relationship with money.

3. Your Expressive Style – Your relationship with money in the world.

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_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Writing

"Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about.

Of course, you can learn a lot about something without writing about it.

However, writing about something complicated and hard to pin down acts as a test to see how well you understand it.

When we approach our work as a stranger, we often discover how something that seems so simple in our heads is explained entirely wrong."

Source: Farnam Street

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day