Good Morning! Hope y’all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Sam Altman is officially back as CEO of OpenAI. Binance is grappling with the aftermath of CZ leaving - users pulled over $1 billion from the exchange. Wall Street dealmaking is back and private lenders provided a record $5B for Adevinta LBO. Spurned WeWork landlords are pushing back as rent negotiations heat up. The stock market is looking like it’s having a Santa Rally. And hedge funds have lost $43 billion in November trying to short the market. 

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Hong Kong Bankers Chilling

If you’re an investment banker dreaming of a better work-life balance, you might want to pack your bags and transfer to your bank’s Hong Kong office.

The investment bankers over there say the deal pipeline has gotten so bleak that they’re taking ‘extended vacations’ for months to places like the Alps and the South of France.

Hong Kong investment banks used to finance those mega China deals. But they’re now pretty elusive. The M&A scene in mainland China and Hong Kong took a 6% nosedive, hitting $185 billion and its lowest levels since 2013. One of the largest deals, Alibaba, raised $11.2B in its 2019 IPO. But since then, the Covid aftermath has really delayed China’s high-finance scene.

And with the Hong Kong IPO market drying up, it’s now down 85%, to its lowest level since 2001. 

Takeaway: But it’s not all positive news for Hong Kong bankers. The threat of layoffs is looming, and many Hong Kong bankers are even considering different careers. And it goes to show that IPO and M&A markets aren’t necessarily equal across the world - bankers are fairly confident Wall Street dealmaking will come roaring back in the U.S. in 2024 or 2025 - but aren’t so sure about China.

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Top Reads

• Why Thanksgiving week is typically bullish for stocks (YF)

• Private lenders provide record almost $5B for Adventina LBO (YF)

• Hedge funds have lost $43B in November trying to short the market (YF)

• What’s next for Binance after DOJ settlement, departure of CZ (CNBC)

• Spurned WeWork landlords push back as rent negotiations heat up (BB)

• Zoomers will overtake Boomers at work next year (Axios)

• Goldman alums set up matchmaking platform for private credit (BB)

• Carlyle’s Big Mac China dish is hard match (Reuters)

• Citi in talks to start new private credit strategy by early 2024 (BB)

• Celsius Network pivots to Bitcoin mining after bankruptcy (Reuters)

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Markets Rundown

Stocks closed higher on Wednesday, and the market was closed yesterday for Thanksgiving.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) GoodRx ($GDRX) +4% after announcing a stock repurchase plan.

• (+) Hewlett-Packard ($HP) +3% after reporting earnings.

• (–) Autodesk ($ADSK) -7% after the software company issued lower-than-expected Q4 earnings.

Private Dealmaking

• Blackstone bought Civica, a public sector software provider, for $2.5 billion

• New Mountain Capital led a buyout of music rights group BMI for $1.7 billion

• Quotient Therapeutics, a genomics startup, raised $50 million

• Indy, a tax and paperwork platform, raised $44 million

• Vivodyne, a drug-testing biotech, raised $38 million

• Ninety, a cloud platform for business operating systems, raised $35 million

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_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

The Book Of Numbers

The world economy and its entire, historic economic production has been fueled by one thing and one thing only – sex. Specifically, men’s desire to have sex with young and beautiful females.

It’s not specifically female youth and beauty per se, as much as it is the fertility these things signal. But make no mistake about, female youth and beauty has powered the world economy since the beginning of time. And men are the economic engines that run on it.

Consequently, in their pursuit of women, men have not only produced nearly every penny of GDP, but have created nearly every technological innovation in the history of the world. They’ve built civilizations from the ground up. Cured diseases through amazing medical advances.

Laid incredible multi-trillion-dollar transportation and communications infrastructures. And it isn’t even these great, Herculean achievements of man, as much as it is the daily grind billions of men today and in the past went through to attract a wife and support a family.

From waking up in the morning, to going to school, to suffering a commute, to working overtime, to hitting the gym, to majoring in STEM, to going to war, even to the granular level of choosing which shirt to buy or what car to finance, nearly all of a man’s post-pubescent life is directly or indirectly dedicated towards the pursuit of women.

And if there were no women, $90 trillion in global GDP and $360 trillion in wealth would simply disappear overnight. And the army of 50 billion men who’ve existed on this planet would never have produced the $3 quadrillion in total historic GDP that built society. Without female youth and beauty, humanity would simply not exist.

But there is an opposite side to this total, historical, global GDP coin. Because while society screams bloody murder over wealth and income gaps between the sexes, nobody asks how all this economic production, let alone these financial disparities, came about.

And while men no doubt out-earn women and own the lion’s share of global wealth, it is only because for every penny of GDP a man’s labor was put into it.

That for every technological innovation, a man paid a price in terms of time, effort, toil, and mental energy. And the $90 trillion in global GDP we see today is not just cryptically “the total economic production of the world,” but can also be viewed as the total price men pay for their pursuit of women.

Is it worth it?

“This essay is nothing less than the most important cost-benefit analysis any man will read, which makes it mandatory reading for any man who wishes to take his life seriously.”

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Short Squeez Picks

• Why buying stuff never makes you happy

• 7 types of rare employees according to a top CEO

• 6 steps to transition from middle to senior leadership

• Outwork everyone by doing less

• How successful people use failure to become great

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Happy Black Friday

_{WHAT ELSE TO READ}

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Total Capital Raise vs. First Time Fund Share

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Turning Envy Into Personal Growth

Reflecting on our desires is the first step towards change. Spend some time alone, contemplating what exactly we long for when we see what others have.

Seek inspiration, surround yourself with stories of individuals who embody the virtues you admire, whether from biographies of great leaders or people closer to home.

Engage with those who model these traits, learn from their journey, and initiate conversations.

Cultivating character traits requires daily practice. Choose one trait to develop and take a daily action embodying it.

Your environment plays a significant role in shaping you, so surround yourself with people who embody these virtues.

Keep a journal to document your progress, and acknowledge and celebrate both others and yourself for embodying these virtues.

Sharing your experiences and teaching others can solidify these virtues within yourself.

Ultimately, our legacy is defined by the depth of our compassion and the strength of our character, rather than material possessions.

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Memes of the Day