Good Morning! Beyond Meat soared 146% after being added to a meme-stock ETF. Warner Bros. Discovery jumped 10% after officially putting itself up for sale. Hedge fund Jana Partners teamed up with NFL star Travis Kelce and built a 9% stake in Six Flags as part of an activist campaign.

Gold and silver tumbled 5% and 6%, marking their steepest one-day drops in a decade after a record-setting rally. Meanwhile, Blackstone and TPG agreed to medical-device maker Hologic private for $18 billion.

Plus: JPMorgan officially opened its $3 billion Park Avenue headquarters as an anti-RTO petition with 2,000 signatures reportedly landed on Jamie Dimon’s desk, and the U.S. Army is turning to private equity to raise $150 billion for infrastructure projects.

Interested in gaining an edge on your payroll operations? Get Deel’s guide to optimize your finance team.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

OpenAI Joins the Deal Team

OpenAI is quietly running an internal program called Project Mercury, where more than 100 former Wall Street analysts are training artificial intelligence to do their old jobs, and getting paid $150 an hour to do it.

The participants, alumni of firms like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Brookfield, Evercore, and KKR, are feeding OpenAI’s models the logic behind corporate finance, the same logic that could one day automate parts of their old workflow.

They build financial models in Excel, then annotate each step in plain language so the AI learns not just the formulas but the reasoning behind them. Each week, participants submit one model, receive structured feedback, and their work is folded into OpenAI’s training data.

Project Mercury’s goal is to teach AI how to think like an analyst, not just write emails or summarize PDFs. OpenAI aims to automate the mechanical parts of investment banking such as updating assumptions, running sensitivities, and formatting pitch decks, the sort of work that once kept junior bankers in the office past 2 a.m.

Soon, prompts like “Run an LBO with 4x leverage and a 5-year exit” could replace hours of manual modeling.

The application process involves almost no human interaction. Candidates first interview with an AI chatbot that quizzes them on accounting, valuation, and Excel shortcuts, followed by a three-statement modeling test. Those who pass gain early access to the same system they are training, creating a feedback loop of bankers teaching machines to automate their least-favorite tasks.

Takeaway: Project Mercury is a beta test for the next generation of dealmaking. If it works, the future of investment banking may not be fought over bonuses and exit opps but over who writes the best prompt.

That said, Project Mercury isn’t necessarily a doomsday scenario for junior bankers, it’s an efficiency solution. Analysts will still need to understand how to build models from scratch, but now they can leverage AI to save time and focus on higher-value analytical work. Just make sure next time, you’re the one building the model that trains the AI, not the one getting $150 an hour to teach it.

PRESENTED BY DEEL

How Top Global Companies Structure Payroll Across Borders

Hiring across countries is easy. Paying compliantly? Not so much.

This guide from Deel breaks down the 3 most common global payroll models (decentralized, centralized, and BPO) with real-world examples, pros and cons, and what to consider when scaling.

Whether you're building an international team or optimizing an existing structure, this is a must-read for finance leaders, HR, and operations teams navigating cross-border compliance.

Find out which model fits your global team best and how to avoid the common pitfalls.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Beyond Meat surges 146% after being added to meme-stock ETF (CNBC)

• Warner Bros. Discovery explores potential sale of its media assets (CNBC)

• Travis Kelce teams up with investor for activist campaign at Six Flags (WSJ)

• Gold and silver plunge in worst trading day of the decade (Axios)

• Blackstone and TPG agree to acquire Hologic in $18 billion deal (BB)

• JPMorgan Chase unveils new HQ in Midtown Manhattan (YF)

• JPMorgan anti-RTO petition heading to Jamie Dimon’s desk (QZ)

• U.S. taps private equity groups to help fund $150B revamp (FT)

• Renter fraud surges across U.S. apartment applications (WSJ)

• German banks push private equity funds to retail investors (FT)

• BlackRock is pulling Bitcoin whales into Wall Street’s orbit (YF)  

• Gold slumps most in four years as record-breaking rally cools (BB)

• First Brands bankruptcy wipes out Jefferies fund that once touted a perfect record (BB)

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff torches his own “do-good tech” image (BB)

• Netflix suffers earnings miss due to Brazil tax snafu (CNBC)

• Defense giants are raising their guidance (CNBC)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• Markets were mixed today after Monday’s sharp rally.

• The Dow Jones outpaced the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, while small-caps lagged.

• Earnings season remains the main focus, with most early reporters beating expectations.

• Precious metals declined sharply after strong year-to-date gains.

• The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield eased to around 4.0%, reflecting expectations for continued Fed rate cuts amid the ongoing government shutdown.

Economic Data Highlights

• Roughly 83% of S&P 500 companies reporting so far have exceeded estimates, well above the 10-year average.

• Earnings growth for the quarter is tracking near 8% year-over-year, with full-year 2025 projected around 11%.

• 2026 earnings are expected to accelerate as growth broadens beyond tech and AI.

• While trade tensions, a soft labor market, and the data blackout from the shutdown pose near-term risks, fundamentals remain supportive: strong profits, AI investment, fiscal stimulus, and further Fed easing.

Reported Earnings

• Netflix (NFLX) – Results were mixed as higher costs weighed on margins, though subscriber growth and revenue trends remained solid.

• Coca-Cola (KO) – Posted steady performance with strong pricing power and resilient global demand.

• Lockheed Martin (LMT) – Reported another solid quarter driven by backlog strength and continued defense-spending tailwinds.

Earnings Today

• Tesla (TSLA) – Focus on vehicle deliveries, margins, and AI/robot-taxi progress.

• IBM (IBM) – Watch for cloud and AI-driven revenue momentum.

• SAP (SAP) – Key updates expected on cloud migration and enterprise demand trends.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Beyond Meat ($BYND) +146% after the penny stock’s inclusion in a meme stock ETF.

• (+) Six Flags ($FUN) +18% because an activist hedge fund took a stake with help from Travis Kelce.

• (–) Philip Morris ($PM) -4% after the tobacco company reported cracks in its Zyn business.

Prediction Markets

• Mamdani almost certain to be next NYC mayor

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

Private Dealmaking

• Tempo, a blockchain-based payments startup, raised $500 million

• Pelage Pharmaceuticals, a developer of hair loss treatments, raised $120 million

• Lila Sciences, a developer of autonomous scientific labs, raised $115 million

• Catapult Sports agreed to buy Impect for $91 million

• Kuku, a storytelling platform, raised $85 million

• Reducto, a document intelligence startup, raised $75 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Unaccountability Machine

Description: A sharp, revealing investigation into why large organizations—governments, big corporations, financial institutions—often make terrible choices despite having every resource. Davies argues that modern systems create “accountability sinks,” where decisions are delegated to rules, algorithms, or distant committees such that no one can be held responsible. The result: outcomes no one wanted, no one claimed responsibility for, and no one learned from.

Book Length: 304 pages
Ideal For: Analysts, leaders, technologists, and anyone trying to understand how scale, complexity, automation and corporate structure combine to produce irrational or destructive results.

“When the people against whom decisions are made can’t reach back and hold someone accountable, the system takes on a life of its own—no longer human, no longer responsive.”

DAILY VISUAL

The GOLDen Era

PRESENTED BY PORTRAIT

Scale Your Research Process with AI Built for the Buyside

Deep research takes time most teams don’t have. Understanding competitive dynamics, tracking thesis signposts, and building conviction across dozens of names means choosing between breadth and depth.

Portrait adds research capacity without adding headcount. Built by former analysts from Baupost, Citadel, and Millennium, the platform handles idea generation, company deep dives, and 24/7 thesis monitoring. Firms managing over $550 billion use it to compress weeks of research into hours.

Three core capabilities set it apart. Nuanced screening surfaces ideas that match your investment criteria, not just basic fundamentals. Auditable reports build context on any business with full source transparency. Automated monitoring tracks the specific data points that matter to your thesis while filtering noise.

Replace your generic AI with AI that knows your investment process. See what Portrait can do.

DAILY ACUMEN

Second Curve Strategy

Careers, businesses, and lives all follow S-curves: growth, plateau, decline.

The secret is to start building the next curve while the first still peaks.

That’s how Netflix replaced DVDs with streaming, and how creators pivot before burnout.

Most people cling to the old curve until it collapses.

Strategic reinvention looks reckless until it’s obvious.

Don’t wait for decay to innovate. Build the bridge before the cliff.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• What’s the point of wealth?

• Why remote work is making your day longer and more annoying

• Why strength training is the best anti-ager

• 10 phrases kind people use without realizing how powerful they are

• 20 ways to love your work a little more

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.

📈 Grow With Us: Work directly with the Overheard on Wall Street team to scale your finance brand. Schedule your free consult.

🔒 Short Squeez Premium – Insiders: Access exclusive content, including investment analysis, wellness features, career tools, and our full recruiting resource library. Upgrade to Premium. 

🧢 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.