Good Morning! Made in USA is back - you might have thought American manufacturing was so last century. But Sterling Infrastructure, the company that builds all the new factories, has soared almost 800% since 2020. But don’t count on that rally trickling down to the broader economy - 80% of investors think the S&P 500 will slump once we get Q3 earnings. Big-company bankruptcies are still hanging over the economy, too.

Hedge fund titan Ray Dalio is worried the chaos on Capitol Hill could create a ‘very risky situation.’ And in other hedge fund drama, Rithm scrapped its plans to increase its offer for hedge fund Sculptor Capital Management - but the initial offer of $11.15 per share still stands.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

New Kings on the Block

This weekend the Wall Street Journal penned a new essay - banks are no longer the Kings of Wall Street.

The new titans? Hedge funds and private equity firms. The article profiles several startups and, kicking off 2023, they had lined up funding from SVB and Credit Suisse.

But when the banks collapsed, they had no choice but to pivot to alternative asset managers like private equity.

It’s been a long time coming. Banks just can’t make the same risky bets they used to be able to before the 2008 crash.

And if you work on Wall Street, you’re trying to get out of investment banking as soon as possible. The pay just isn’t what it used to be, and the work’s gotten a lot more mundane.

Takeaway: And it’s a weird dynamic. Private credit is never startups’ preferred choice. But, right now, it’s their only choice. Private credit loans are a lot more expensive. And they’re starting to draw scrutiny, too.

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks closed higher and shook off Israel-Gaza fears.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Halliburton ($HAL) +7%  the oil stock rose because of the escalating Israel-Hamas conflict.

• (+) Zscaler ($ZS) +3% after Barclays upgraded the cybersecurity company.

• (–) Datadog ($DDOG) -4% after a downgrade by Bank of America.

Private Dealmaking

• Metropolis, an AI-powered parking startup, raised $1.7 billion

• Investree, a P2P lender startup, raised $231 million

• Iambic Therapeutics, an AI-powered drug company, raised $100 million

• Cardata, a mileage reimbursement software, raised $100 million

• SuperOrdinary, an e-commerce platform for beauty brands, raised $58 million

• Glydways, a robotaxi startup, raised $56 million

Get access to private deal flow here.

_{SPONSORED BY CAPLINKED}

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_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• SoftBank’s Arm faces Wall Street scrutiny (BB)

• Why mortgage rates are so high (Axios)

• Wall Street isn’t sure it can handle all of Washington’s bonds (WSJ)

• Venture capital slump continues in Q3 (Axios)

• China’s economy will be hobbled for years by the real estate crisis (CNN)

• How FTX executives secretly spent $8 billion in customer money (WSJ)

• Excess savings are just regular savings now (YF)

• Tweet saying FTX was ‘fine’ was false, court says (BBC)

• Blackstone’s billion-dollar bet on Reese Witherspoon falls short (BB)

• U.S. job growth sizzles in September (Reuters)

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

The First Rule of Mastery

Fear of people’s opinions (FOPO), shows up almost everywhere in our lives—and the consequences are great. When we let FOPO take control, we play it safe and small because we're afraid of what will happen on the other side of critique.

When challenged, we surrender our viewpoint. We trade in authenticity for approval. We please rather than provoke. We chase the dreams of others rather than our own.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

In The First Rule of Mastery, Michael Gervais shows us that the key to leading a high-performance life is to redirect our attention from the world outside us to the world inside us.

He reveals the mental skills and practices we need to overcome FOPO—the same skills he's taught to the top performers in the world, including sports MVPs, world-renowned artists and musicians, and Fortune 100 leaders and teams.

Filled with fascinating stories from the worlds of sports and business, leading-edge science, and insights from the frontier of human performance, The First Rule of Mastery is a much-needed wake-up call that when we give more value to other people's opinions than we do our own, we live life on their terms, not ours.

“High-performance psychologist Michael Gervais presents a groundbreaking guide for overcoming what may be the single greatest constrictor of human potential: our fear of people’s opinions (FOPO).”

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• How to politely send food back at a restaurant

• 10 daily reminders we need to read every morning

• 9 easy morning habits to make your entire day better

• 7 strategies to cope with the stress of career uncertainty

• 5 books every entrepreneur should read before starting their business

_{DAILY VISUAL}

Food Companies Reap Record Profits Amid Hunger Crisis

Profits of select global agriculture companies

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Productivity

The key to productivity is doing more of what matters and less of what doesn't.

When you concentrate your mental and physical energy in one direction, you have the most impact.

One way to reduce the surface area of your attention is to ask yourself the difficult question of whether what you are doing really matters to the outcome you want.

If you are ruthless, you can eliminate 20-40% of what you are doing today without impacting the most important things.

All the time you spend on the least important things comes at the expense of the most important things.

Source: Farnam Street

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_{JOB BOARD}

Featured Jobs

• Associate - Caxton Associates - New York, NY

• Sutimoto Mitsui - Associate - New York, NY

• Associate - Atlas - New York, NY

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day