Short Squeez
Posts
🍋 No exits? No problem

🍋 No exits? No problem

Plus: Singapore is becoming a major Wall Street hub, Balogun red card rescinded after Trump call, and Elliott is minting the next generation of hedge fund giants.

Short Squeez
July 06, 2026

Together With

“Calm plants the seeds of crazy.” — Morgan Housel

Good Morning! Singapore has climbed into the top five global finance hubs, up from ninth in 2015, as assets migrate over from Hong Kong. Brown University had its credit outlook cut to negative by Moody's. And PE firm Peak Rock Capital is betting on the specialty drug boom with its acquisition of Asembia.

Starwood raised $10.2 billion to bet on data centers and housing, and Elliott is quietly becoming the hedge fund industry's new Tiger cub factory.

Plus: Folarin Balogun's suspension was lifted (reportedly after a Trump request that FIFA review it) ahead of USA-Belgium, even a $180K tech salary no longer cuts it in SF, and how heat waves are a chronic drag on the economy.

Build custom deployments around your firm's unique workflows with Endex.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

No exits? No problem

As payouts dry up in a prolonged deal slowdown, private equity fund investors are increasingly reaching for creative, debt-like structures to free up cash.

Buyout firms are holding companies longer, exits are slow, and distributions to fund backers have stayed weak for years. So pension plans, family offices and other investors are getting creative. Backers agreed roughly $9 billion of alternative, structured deals last year to pull cash from their fund stakes, up from $6 billion in 2024, according to Jefferies, which expects the trend to continue this year.

These preferred equity deals are the latest twist in the secondary market, where investors increasingly back ageing fund assets instead of new deals or funds. Here's how the structure works: instead of selling a fund stake at a discount, an investor takes a cash advance from a buyer. That buyer then collects all distributions from the underlying funds until the advance plus a minimum return is repaid. After that, the seller keeps most or all of the remaining upside.

Sellers get cash now without locking in a loss, and many are recycling it straight into newer buyout funds. Buyers get first claim on future distributions. And the buyer pool is widening, with secondaries investors, preferred-equity specialists and alternative credit managers (like BlackRock's HPS and Goldman Sachs Asset Management) converging on these deals. The same pressure is showing up elsewhere, including the first significant standalone secondary sales of co-investments.

Takeaway: Private equity's distribution problem is not going away, and it is spawning a market around the fact that investors need liquidity before firms can actually sell anything. Secondary sales were once the pressure valve. Now preferred equity is being layered on top to keep cash moving. A 50% jump in these deals is not proof the problem is being solved. It is proof more investors need the workaround.

PRESENTED BY ENDEX

The Fabled Return

This past week, Anthropic restored global access to Fable 5, its most powerful publicly released model, nineteen days after a U.S. export-control directive pulled it offline just after launch.

The model is capable of working over 17 hours, reflecting the race among model providers to compete for long horizon tasks. JPMorgan's Chief Analytics Officer expects long-horizon agents at the firm in 2026, with AI staying coherent for "multiple hours, then days, then weeks."

To turn long-horizon capability into automations finance teams can trust, Wall Street firms work with Endex to embed their own standards, data, and workflows.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Markets were closed in observance of Independence Day.

Prediction Markets

USA, USA, USA!! Also, how is there no appeal process with FIFA?!
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, raised $100 million
Straiker, which secures AI agents, raised $64 million
Oblenio Bio, a biotech focused on autoimmune disease, raised $62 million
Aligned, a B2B sales workspace, raised $60 million
Partly, an AI model for the automotive repair supply chain, raised $50 million
Honeycomb, a digital insurer, raised $40 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

Brag Better

Description:
A practical career guide from Meredith Fineman on how to confidently communicate your value without feeling boastful or inauthentic. The book challenges the stigma around self-promotion, showing that sharing your accomplishments effectively is an essential professional skill rather than an act of ego. Through actionable frameworks, real-world examples, and communication strategies, it teaches readers how to build visibility, strengthen their personal brand, and create more opportunities by advocating for themselves with confidence.

Book Length: 288 pages
Release Date: June 25, 2019

Ideal For:
Professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone looking to build a stronger personal brand, earn recognition for their work, and communicate their accomplishments more effectively.

The people who get the opportunities are not always the most talented, they are often the ones who know how to communicate their value.

DAILY VISUAL

$1 billion Uncrustables Sold in FY2026

PRESENTED BY REX SHARES

One Ticker for a 2X Daily Play on the Hottest Trade in Chips

Memory chips (DRAM and NAND) are what let AI systems hold and move data, and right now demand from data centers is blowing past what manufacturers can produce. That shortage has sent memory prices, and memory stocks, soaring in 2026.

The Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) launched in April and rode that wave to become the most successful ETF debut in history: up roughly 180% and past $20B in assets in just over two months. Last week its top holding, Micron, posted the best quarter in the memory industry’s history, with gross margins north of 80%.

Now there’s a leveraged version. The Roundhill T-REX 2X Long DRAM Daily Target ETF (RAM) is live, seeking 200% of DRAM’s daily performance. It comes from the same T-REX franchise behind the first 2X NVIDIA ETF, built in partnership with Roundhill, the issuer of DRAM. RAM resets daily, and monthly options are available.

Visit rexshares.com/ram for the prospectus and risk disclosures. Investing in RAM is not equivalent to investing in DRAM.

DAILY ACUMEN

Complexity Bias

Faced with a problem, people instinctively trust the complicated answer over the simple one, because complexity feels like rigor and simplicity feels like something was missed. This is backwards more often than not. The elaborate explanation, the intricate strategy, the model with forty variables, these impress precisely because they are hard to follow, not because they are more likely to be right.

The bias runs deep in any field that rewards looking smart. A simple answer, even a correct one, feels unsatisfying, almost like cheating, so people reach past it for something with more moving parts to justify their fees, their credentials, their sense of having done real work.

But reality is frequently simpler than the stories we build around it. The willingness to accept a plain answer when it is the true one, and to resist dressing it up in complexity to feel more impressive, is a discipline that quietly separates clear thinkers from everyone performing intelligence.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How laptops got so expensive
Making the leap from corporate leader to PE-backed CEO
5 tips on how to become the most likable person in the room
Why bodyweight exercises aren’t always better than lifting weights
5 counterintuitive tips for working more effectively
A new card to get 100% cashback on your purchases

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.

What'd you think of today's edition?

Reply

or to participate.