Short Squeez
Posts
🍋 PE’s Dating Bull Market

🍋 PE’s Dating Bull Market

Plus: The jobs report missed badly, private credit defaults hit a record, and inside one of Berkshire’s first big post-Buffett bets on housing.

Short Squeez
August 10, 2026

Together With

“The best defense is a good offense, but it also helps to have a good lawyer.” — LLoyd Blankfein

Good Morning! The US economy unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July, though unemployment ticked down to 4.1%. The private credit default rate hit a record 6% through Q2 as borrowers run low on funds. And Carlyle says the PE exit market is open, but only for sellers of "good companies."

Washington DC is America's newest billionaire boomtown. Berkshire went all-in on housing with a Taylor Morrison deal, one of its first major moves in the post-Buffett era. And ex-Lazard and UBS bankers were invited to join Mamdani's new business panel.

Plus: Rockstar Energy's founder built a $300 million Celsius stake and wants to take over as CEO, and how BC Partners is using losses to buy companies.

Everyone talks about integrating AI, but most haven't worked out where it actually fits. See how investment bankers are using it through every stage of the M&A deal lifecycle.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

PE’s Dating Bull Market

Private equity may be struggling to exit its portfolio companies right now, but the people working at these companies, from associates to partners alike, seem to be exiting the dating market just fine.

This summer, PE guys have somehow become a celebrity accessory. Reese Witherspoon is dating Searchlight Capital co-founder Oliver Haarmann, whose firm manages more than $17 billion. Nicole Kidman was photographed poolside with Michael Reinstein, founder of private equity firm Regent, which owns Bally, Escada, Club Monaco and TechCrunch.

Olivia Rodrigo is reportedly dating Julian Croonenberghs, a PE associate at Hg Capital who spent two years grinding at Goldman IB first. And Andy Cohen is dating Kevin Sobieski, portfolio ops at TPG focused on healthcare, ex-Bain and HBS.

The timing is what makes it funny, because the industry is not exactly thriving. Firms are sitting on a backlog of companies they can't sell, fundraising has slowed sharply, and recent vintages haven't come close to the returns investors got used to.

Part of this is probably just pop culture needing a new shorthand for "extremely rich finance guy." Last summer it was investment banking, with that viral "man in finance" song turning six-foot-five trust-fund bankers into a meme overnight. PE has a little more mystique to it, though with less Excel jockeying through a model, and more mysterious guy who somehow owns three industrial companies in Ohio and still has a dinner reservation in St. Tropez.

There's some logic to this though. A lot of these celebrities are essentially businesspeople themselves, running production companies, beauty brands, and consumer empires alongside their actual careers. Witherspoon has spent years building and selling businesses tied to her media brand. "The two of them actually were a hell of a team, I can see why they're together." Kevin O'Leary commented after watching Witherspoon and Haarmann speak at HBS last fall.

O'Leary also gives his take on dating a PE guy: "If you live in the celebrity bubble, party after party, with the same people, the same 25 people, life gets really boring. When you end up with a private-equity guy, your life gets far more interesting."

Takeaway: It’s officially the summer of PE bros. They have graduated from "barbarians at the gate" to something closer to "eligible bachelor with a carry check." Looks like the only successful exits in private equity this year have been romantic.

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

12 AI Use Cases for Junior Investment Bankers

Coverage and relationship management
Pitch book development
Deal kick-off and workspace setup
Financial Modeling
Equity story and CIM development
Buyer identification and process preparation
Buyer outreach and process management
Due diligence and VDRs
Bid evaluation and negotiation
Quality control and document review
Legal and regulatory workstreams
Closing and deal administration

For more knowledge into how private markets use AI, follow Blueflame’s Instagram. And to try it out yourself, schedule a demo with their team.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

S&P 500 hit a record high as the July jobs report showed softer wages and hiring; the 10-year Treasury yield eased near 4.64%.
WTI crude edged down near $77 on reports Iran and Oman are nearing a Strait of Hormuz agreement.
Nonfarm payrolls fell 23,000 in July versus expectations for a 95,000 gain, while unemployment edged down to 4.1%.

Earnings Season

With 88% of the S&P 500 reporting, 86% have beaten estimates by an average 29% upside surprise.
Q2 earnings growth forecasts were revised up to 48%, more than double the 22% estimate at quarter end.
Energy is posting the strongest growth, followed by communications and consumer discretionary, with 10 of 11 sectors reporting year-over-year gains.

Movers & Shakers

(+) Twilio ($TWLO) +25% after Q2 revenue hit a record $1.50 billion, up 22% year-over-year.
(+) Airbnb ($ABNB) +17% because Q2 revenue beat estimates and the company raised its full-year 2026 revenue growth outlook.
(–) Under Armour ($UAA) -5% after Q2 revenue missed consensus and the company forecast a steeper annual sales decline.

Prediction Markets

Maybe they’ll all shift to trading on prediction markets…
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Nielsen agreed to buy DoubleVerify, a digital media measurement firm, for around $2.15 billion
Firmus, an Australian AI infrastructure company, raised $2 billion
Lumilens, a connectivity platform for AI infrastructure, raised more than $700 million
Whatnot, a live-shopping platform for collectibles, raised $545 million
Olix, a U.K. chip designer, raised $300 million
Sonablate, a developer of image-guided therapeutic ultrasound technologies, raised $200 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Meaning of Your Life

Description:
A thoughtful exploration from Arthur C. Brooks about why meaning and purpose can be so difficult to find in modern life. Brooks argues that rapid cultural, economic, and technological change has made it easier to become distracted from the deeper questions that give life significance. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the world's great spiritual traditions, he offers a practical framework for discovering purpose, cultivating meaningful relationships, and building a more fulfilling life.

Book Length: 304 pages
Release Date: March 31, 2026

Ideal For:
Readers interested in happiness, purpose, psychology, philosophy, personal development, and building a more meaningful life.

A meaningful life isn't discovered by finding the perfect answer, it begins by asking the right questions.

DAILY VISUAL

U.S. Economy Surprisingly Lost 23K Jobs in July

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How the Rich Borrow Until They Die

ProPublica once calculated that America's 25 wealthiest paid a “true tax rate” of 3.4% on $401 billion in wealth growth*. Their playbook has three steps. 1. Buy assets that appreciate. 2. Borrow against them when cash is needed. Since loan proceeds aren't income, no tax bill arrives. 3. Then die, because heirs inherit at a stepped-up basis, meaning decades of embedded gains are wiped clean for tax purposes and the estate simply settles the loans. Larry Ellison has pledged billions in Oracle stock this way for years. Stelrix introduces the borrow step, with an investment-backed credit card, to portfolios without a private banker.

Explore Stelrix's Instagram for more luxury and finance news and sign-up for their waitlist today.

DAILY ACUMEN

Comfortable Evidence

Once you have taken a position, in a trade, an argument, a belief about your own career, the brain quietly stops evaluating evidence and starts defending a conclusion it already reached.

Information that supports the original view gets welcomed in easily. Information that contradicts it gets interrogated, discounted, or explained away, often without you noticing the asymmetry in how each was treated.

This is especially dangerous in an industry built on theses. Once the memo is written, the position defended in a meeting, and colleagues told why it is right, every new data point gets filtered through the need to have been right in the first place. Disconfirming evidence does not vanish. It just quietly gets reclassified as noise.

The discipline worth building is searching for the argument against your own position with the same energy you searched for the argument supporting it. If you cannot state the strongest version of why you might be wrong, you have not tested the thesis. You have only decorated it.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

How to create your best good enough day
The best morning routine for longevity
How to rule the mind by increasing your qualities and powers
The best and worst habits for your liver
The hidden way cannabis changes your brain while you sleep
Get spending insights to help your budgeting*

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?

*Partner sponsored post.

Reply

or to participate.