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🍋 The Boring $3.7B Trade

🍋 The Boring $3.7B Trade

Plus: Microsoft is cutting thousands of jobs, elite students are ditching banking for startups, and New York is building apartments at a pace not seen since 1965.

Short Squeez
July 07, 2026

Together With

“Consequences are more important than probabilities.” — Michael Mauboussin

Good Morning! Microsoft axed about 4,800 jobs, including major cuts to Xbox. Versant agreed to buy golf simulator company Full Swing from Bruin Capital for $530 million. And elite students are skipping investment banking internships to spend their summers building startups.

New York City added 38,682 apartment units last year, the most since 1965. Micron is betting big on New York chips. And young couples are driving a prenup boom.

Plus: Rhode Island's new second home tax, nicknamed for Taylor Swift, takes effect today, and why luxury shoppers swear by airport boutiques.

“Buy, borrow, die". It’s the strategy the wealthy use to access capital. You can now do it with Stelrix. Join the waitlist today.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

The Boring $3.7B Trade

Two trading pods at Millennium Management made roughly $3.7 billion in June alone, accounting for more than half of the firm's $6.6 billion in profit.

The teams were run by New York-based Glen Scheinberg, whose group (known internally as SRBL) is the larger of the two, and Dubai-based Pratik Madhvani.

Millennium returned 4.1% in June, pushing year-to-date gains to 10.5% on roughly $89 billion of assets.

Both pods specialize in index rebalancing, one of the least glamorous and most lucrative corners of professional investing. When a stock is added to or removed from the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, or Russell indexes, trillions of dollars in passive funds are forced to trade. The rules are public and the flows are predictable. The hard part is figuring out who has to buy what, when, and how much, and getting there before everyone else does.

June was the Super Bowl of forced flows. The S&P 500 rebalanced, the Nasdaq 100 changed, Russell completed its annual reconstitution, SpaceX received a fast-tracked inclusion, and quarter-end multi-asset rebalancing all hit at once. When the dust settled, two Millennium pods had reportedly walked away with $3.7 billion, largely by reading the calendar better than everyone else.

This is where pod-shop economics get almost absurd. Millennium runs more than 330 teams, each with its own strategy, risk limits, and P&L. The firm supplies the infrastructure, leverage, and risk management, takes its cut, and pays top performers enormous sums when they print. One widely shared X estimate suggested that if Scheinberg's team generated roughly $2 billion, the bonus pool could have broken down something like this:

Scheinberg, 39: $240M cash bonus
Senior Analyst, 34: $32M cash bonus
Analyst, 29: $14M cash bonus
Analyst, 26: $8M cash bonus

Takeaway: The multistrategy pod shop may be the most ruthless and efficient money machine in modern finance. The losers get cut; the winners can earn more in a month than most hedge funds make in a year. But it is not always rainbows and butterflies. This same trade cost Millennium roughly $900 million just last year, and the niche that a dozen firms ran in the '90s now has fifty-plus fighting over it. June was the fat tail, not the baseline, and the edge shrinks as the crowd grows.

PRESENTED BY STELRIX

How the Rich Don’t Pay Capital Gains Tax

The wealthy don’t just make money differently, they access it differently. Instead of selling appreciating assets and triggering capital gains taxes, many borrow against their portfolios to unlock liquidity while their investments continue compounding in the background. This strategy, often called “buy, borrow, die,” allows investors to use stocks, ETFs, or other assets as collateral for low interest credit without creating a taxable sale event. The advantage is not only tax deferral, but also maintaining ownership, preserving long term market exposure, and keeping compounding intact while still accessing cash when needed. What was once a strategy reserved for ultra high net worth private banking clients is now becoming increasingly accessible through modern investment backed credit platforms, like Stelrix.

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

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

U.S. equities closed higher, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching another record high as technology stocks rebounded.
The 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.47%, while the U.S. dollar strengthened modestly.
WTI crude oil remained below $70 per barrel following OPEC+'s decision to increase production.
International markets were mixed in Asia and mostly lower in Europe.

Services Activity

The S&P Global U.S. Services PMI rose to 51.2 in June, remaining above the 50 level for a third consecutive month.
The ISM Services PMI edged down to 54.0 from 54.5, while employment returned to expansion.
Services activity continues to expand, supporting broader economic growth and labor-market stability.

Movers & Shakers

(+) Advanced Micro Devices ($AMD) +7% after Goldman Sachs raised its price target to $640 from $450, arguing AMD’s data center GPU and CPU momentum is being underestimated.
(+) IBM ($IBM) +4% because Bank of America raised its price target to $330 from $315.
(–) O’Reilly Automotive ($ORLY) -7% after a report that the company is making a cash bid for Genuine Parts’ auto-parts business.

Prediction Markets

Reddit is the front-runner for the next company added to the S&P 500.
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

Castlelake agreed to buy EasyJet for around $7 billion
Lockheed Martin agreed to acquire Ultra Maritime, a naval tech firm, for $3.45 billion
Ondas agreed to buy DZYNE, an autonomous aircraft maker, for $875.8 million
Versant Media Group is paying $530 million to acquire Full Swing, a golf simulator maker
Skello, a French HR management software firm, raised around $215 million
Even Realities, a Chinese smart glasses maker, raised $150 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

Start With Yourself

Description:
A candid and practical guide from Emma Grede on building meaningful success by taking ownership of your mindset, decisions, and actions. Drawing on her journey from East London to becoming a founding partner of SKIMS and co-founder of Good American, Grede argues that lasting success begins with changing how you think before changing your circumstances. The book offers actionable frameworks for overcoming self-imposed limitations, managing emotions, embracing accountability, and creating a life and career aligned with your ambitions.

Book Length: 320 pages
Release Date: April 14, 2026

Ideal For:
Entrepreneurs, professionals, and anyone looking to develop a stronger mindset, take greater ownership of their success, and build a fulfilling career and life with intention.

Success begins the moment you stop waiting for someone else to change your life and start with yourself.

DAILY VISUAL

Japan: Housing Demand Declining

Source: Apollo

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

Private Equity Drops $4 Billion Just to Turn AI On

TPG, Advent, Bain Capital, and Brookfield recently put more than $4 billion into a joint venture with OpenAI. It’s not to buy a company but just to get AI actually deployed. Blackstone and Goldman answered the same day with a $1.5 billion Anthropic version.

The biggest names in private markets are paying billions for deployment, because these chatbots lack the industry expertise to execute the work at excellence. A chat window can't tear through a data room or build an LBO.

Deal teams are partnering with the freshly rebranded Blueflame, whose new agent, Amp, runs deal work end to end, from data room reviews to model builds and IC memos. It routes each task to the right model and only pauses where human judgment is needed.

See what AI built for finance can do for your firm.

DAILY ACUMEN

The Long Game

Almost everyone claims to be playing the long game. Very few actually are, and the tell is not what they say but what they do the moment a short-term reward and a long-term interest come into conflict. That collision happens constantly, quietly, in small choices no one else witnesses, and it is where the real time horizon of a person gets revealed.

Playing the long game is not a personality you declare. It is a series of specific moments where you take the worse outcome now because you can see the better one later, and most people fold in exactly those moments while continuing to describe themselves as patient.

The people who genuinely think in decades are rare enough that they end up with almost no competition, because nearly everyone they are up against quietly optimized for this quarter while telling themselves a story about the next ten years.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

Motley Fool Money’s “It” card for 2026*
4 easy shoulder exercises to get chisled
Why luxury shoppers swear by airport boutiques
In new luxury kitchens, everything is hidden including the sink
How a 2x2 matrix can help you boost productivity
Exercises that combine speed and strength

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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📈 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.

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