Good Morning! The dollar slid after Trump’s comments. Amazon is shutting all Fresh and Go stores to focus on Whole Foods and delivery. Humana and UnitedHealth fell nearly 20% after Medicare Advantage rates were proposed to stay flat.

Blackstone made a $400M gain on Marathon’s sale to CVC. AppLovin demanded a retraction from short seller CapitalWatch, which accused it of acting as a “digital laundromat” for criminal syndicates. And homebuyers are backing out at the fastest pace in almost a decade, 16.3% of deals canceled in December.

Plus: Goldman expects slower hiring, private credit firms are selling debt to themselves at record levels, and bankers advising Don Jr. and Eric Trump made $66M in 2025.

Worried AI will take your job? Train the models instead and try Endex.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

JPMorgan vs. Goldman

JPMorgan may be the biggest bank on Wall Street, but inside the firm, leadership and bankers are becoming frustrated: the firm keeps losing marquee M&A mandates to Goldman Sachs. Earlier this month, senior leaders pushed dealmakers to step up and close the widening advisory gap with rivals, singling out Goldman Sachs as the benchmark.

Senior leaders are dialing up the pressure after a soft fourth quarter, when JPMorgan’s M&A fees slipped. Some deals simply rolled into 2026, but the optics still stung. During a meeting, senior leaders told JPMorgan’s bankers that they’re underperforming and need to win back market share. JPMorgan trailed peers in the one business that still defines investment-banking prestige: advisory.

JPMorgan is still the largest firm on Wall Street by total investment-banking revenue and is dominant in debt and equity capital markets. But in pure advisory, the highest-margin, most reputation-defining slice of the business, it finished third globally in 2025. Goldman led, with Morgan Stanley close behind. Advisory is where CEOs pick their trusted counselor, where league tables actually matter, and where the biggest, flashiest mandates are won or lost.

The pressure is also personal. JPMorgan has lost several senior rainmakers to rivals, including Citi, where former JPMorgan executive Vis Raghavan is rebuilding the firm’s deal franchise and recruiting aggressively. JPMorgan has responded and hired more than 100 managing directors over the past year. For JPMorgan, it’s a full-blown talent arms race for the bankers who control marquee mandates.

While 2025 was the second-best year ever for global deal value, bankers expect 2026 to be even stronger as private equity deploys dry powder, AI consolidation accelerates, and regulatory conditions ease. JPMorgan doesn’t need more volume; it needs more trophy mandates that will shape league tables, define reputations, and determine who CEOs call first when it’s time to sell.

Takeaway: Goldman has owned the mystique and clout, but JPMorgan owns the balance sheet and the distribution machine. As the next M&A cycle gathers speed, the question isn’t whether deal volume will rise; it’s whether JPMorgan can translate its scale into true advisory dominance. League tables shape perception, perception shapes mandates, and mandates shape power. If JPMorgan wants the crown back from Goldman, it has to win not just on size, but on prestige.

PRESENTED BY ENDEX

GPT-6 expected Q1 2026. What Will New Launch Mean For Finance?

December’s GPT 5.2 launch brought significant improvements to the LLMs. Analysts, associates, and C-Suites are wondering how close to a true “AI analyst” will we come to in 2026.

Endex, OpenAI’s Excel agent, is already capable of generalist work such as building DCFs, comps, and sensitivity analysis.

Investment banks and PE firms are racing to bring AI agents into their workflows, as they prepare for future LLM breakthroughs.

To request access to Endex, click here.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Dollar falls after Trump comments (Axios)

• Amazon closing all Amazon Fresh and Go stores to focus on Whole Foods and grocery delivery (GeekWire)

• Health insurers tumble after Trump proposes keeping Medicare rates flat (CNBC)

• Blackstone makes over $400 million gain on Marathon sale to CVC (BB)

• AppLovin demands short-seller CapitalWatch retract 'conspiratorial' report (CNBC)

• Homebuyers backing out of deals at the fastest pace in nearly a decade (CNBC)

• Sophie Rain clears $100M gross earnings on OnlyFans (SS)

• Goldman’s Solomon sees slower trajectory for talent growth (BB)

• Private credit firms sell debt to themselves at record rate (FT)

• Trump Tower banker duo share $66M pay package for 2025 (BB)

• The gold rally is the new bet against Trump (Axios)

• First Brands winding down parts of business (WSJ)

• Yahoo launches Scout AI search engine (Axios)

• Hedge fund Lucida Capital beats Bay Street with 65% return (BB)

• Former Citi exec alleges sexual harassment by wealth chief (YF)

• Pension buyout deals slow as big companies weigh retaining schemes (FT)

• Kirkland & Ellis quits as counsel to Altice USA amid Wall Street pressure (FT)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• U.S. equities traded mostly higher, with the Dow lagging due to weakness in UnitedHealth Group

• Tariff headlines resurfaced after President Trump threatened higher tariffs on South Korean imports, though market impact was limited

• South Korea’s KOSPI rose nearly 3% overnight, signaling contained global spillover

• The U.S. dollar fell about 1% on the day and is now down 3%+ since January 19

• Treasury yields were little changed, with the 10-year ~4.23% and 2-year ~3.57%

Economic Data Highlights

• Consumer Confidence dropped to 84.5, the lowest since May 2014, driven by concerns around Washington, inflation, and the labor market

• The Atlanta Fed GDPNow tracker estimates Q4 GDP growth above 5%, signaling strong recent momentum

• Initial jobless claims averaged ~202K over the past month, and unemployment declined to 4.4% in December

• Core CPI rose 2.6% YoY in December and 0.2% MoM, supporting a view that inflation is gradually moderating

Fed Watch

• The FOMC meeting concludes tomorrow, with markets expecting no rate change at 3.5%–3.75%

• Markets currently price the first 2026 rate cut in June, followed by a potential second cut in December

• We expect inflation to hover between 2.5%–3.0% in 2026, creating room for 1–2 cuts later this year

Reported Earnings

• United Parcel Service, Raytheon Technologies, and General Motors reported better-than-expected earnings, supporting industrial stocks

• UnitedHealth Group and other insurers fell after Medicare Advantage payment rates were set to rise only 0.09% in 2027, pressuring profitability

• Q4 S&P 500 earnings are tracking ~7% YoY growth, bringing 2025 EPS growth to ~11%+

• 2026 earnings expected to rise ~15%, with all 11 sectors projected to grow

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Corning ($GLW) +16% after Meta signed a $6B optical fiber deal.

• (–) Reddit ($RDDT) -8% because Cleveland Research analyst warned ad growth may slow.

• (–) UnitedHealth ($UNH) -20% after soft revenue guidance; Trump Medicare spending surprise.

Prediction Markets

• Fed rate decision comes today, ~2pm EST.

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

Private Dealmaking

• Inferact, an AI infrastructure startup building on the open-source vLLM ecosystem, raised $150 million

• Standard Nuclear, a producer of advanced nuclear fuel for next-generation reactors, raised $140 million

• Railway, a cloud platform for deploying and managing software applications, raised $100 million

• Superstate, a tokenization and on-chain issuance platform for financial assets, raised $82.5 million

• Pomelo, a payments infrastructure platform supporting financial services across Latin America, raised $55 million

• Juspay, a payments infrastructure provider for enterprises and banks, raised $50 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Contrarian

Description: A sharp, revealing portrait of Peter Thiel and the ideology shaping modern Silicon Valley power. Chafkin traces Thiel’s journey from PayPal to Palantir, Facebook, and political influence, unpacking his worldview on monopoly, competition, free speech, and elite rule. The book explores how a small group of tech billionaires reshaped culture, politics, and markets, raising urgent questions about innovation, power, and accountability in the digital age.

Book Length: 256 pages
Release Date: September 14, 2021

Ideal For: Tech watchers, investors, founders, policy thinkers, and anyone curious about the philosophy and influence behind Silicon Valley’s most controversial power brokers.

“Behind every great technology platform is a theory about how the world should be run.”

DAILY VISUAL

KFC is Cooked

PRESENTED BY KINGSCROWD

Crowdfunding Analytics Platform Raises Crowdfunding

Startups raised $1.6B from retail investors in 2024. Yet most people still rely on pitch decks and pitch videos to decide where to put their money.

VCs have a team of analysts. Retail investors are left to a founder’s “trust me”.

Kingscrowd is that team of analysts for the retail investor. The platform tracks startups in real time across 100+ crowdfunding portals and has built track record in early-stage investing.

• $2.5M+ booked in 2025 sales

• 7 strategic acquisitions, including Lustro and CrowdCheck, last year

• Past investors include Oyster.vc, Global Millennial Capital, and the former CIO of Citibank

Now, they're raising to expand to the broader private market ecosystem.

Learn more about their raise.*

DAILY ACUMEN

Information Asymmetry

George Akerlof won a Nobel Prize for explaining why used car markets collapse. Sellers know the car's problems. Buyers don't. This information asymmetry means buyers assume the worst, so only terrible cars get sold.

You're swimming in information asymmetries. Your employer knows the company's real financials. You don't. Your doctor knows treatment alternatives. You don't. Dating profiles show highlights, not reality.

But you also have information others lack. You know your true effort level. Your actual knowledge. Your real intentions. You can exploit this or eliminate it.

The best businesses eliminate information asymmetry. Zappos offered free returns because they knew their shoes were good. Transparency became competitive advantage. The worst businesses maximize it. That's why used car salesmen have that reputation.

Information asymmetry is everywhere. Your job is to recognize when you're the sucker and eliminate it when you're not.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• What’s the point of retirement?

• How to be smart when buying vintage luxury

• 5 things to do when you wake up for more energy

• How to design meetings around how human brains actually work

• Why the full-body workout reigns supreme

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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