Good Morning! For the first time in decades, Wall Street lawyers make more than investment bankers. Top law partners are raking in $2-5 million a year (some are even making upwards of $15 million) whereas the average investment banking managing director makes $1-2 million.

But not all lawyers are doing too hot. A New York judge just sanctioned a group of lawyers who got caught using ChatGPT when they cited fake cases. Microsoft says it could abandon the Activision deal over the regulatory holdup. And the last section of the High Line, stretching from Penn Station to Chelsea, just opened yesterday, making NYC even more walkable.

Composer is the first platform that lets you invest in or build quant strategies, without owning a hedge fund. Their Buy the Dips: Nasdaq 100 strategy made a return of 32%+ last year. Check them out here.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

PE Recruiting Gone Wild

Private equity recruiting has always been wild, but have we finally reached a breaking point?

The race to fill associate classes with freshly-graduated investment banking analysts is intense, but firms used to wait around a year before interviewing candidates. These interviews are known to be intense, and having a year of banking under their belt allowed analysts to discuss deal experience and the intricacies of the industry.

But on-cycle recruiting for private equity kept creeping up further and further on the calendar every year. Last year? Some firms started hitting up analysts less than a month after they started.

It looks like investment banking analysts have started to think a bit more about what they want two years down the down the road, than being peer pressured into interviewing for PE jobs in their first month on the job.

As a result? Some analysts sat out and this left prominent firms with unfilled positions. Private equity firms even had to resort to a second round of recruiting this year to fill out their 2024 associate classes.

Takeaway: Everyone thought private equity recruiting would keep getting pushed earlier and earlier, but recruiting candidates only a few months out of college was starting to get ridiculous. There’s no doubt private equity recruiting will continue to be cutthroat, but hopefully the timeline has come back down to earth.

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks closed higher as Powell wrapped up testimony.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Root ($ROOT) +34% after reported buyout talks for the car insurance company.

• (+) Overstock ($OSTK) +17% after the retailer won a $21.5M bid for Bed Bath & Beyond assets.

• (–) Spirit AeroSystems ($SPR) -9% after the Boeing supplier shut down its plant over a workers’ strike.

Private Dealmaking

• Blackstone invested $1 billion in Invenergy Renewables

• Fortress Investment Group bought Vice Media for $225 million 

• Robinhood bought X1, a credit card startup, for $95 million

• DexCare, a patient demand and care access platform, raised $75 million

• Volt, an open banking startup, raised $60 million

• Warp, a modern terminal app, raised $50 million

_{SPONSORED BY COMPOSER}

Your AI Copilot for Trading

Meet Composer's AI copilot, the next-generation of algorithmic trading.With their AI copilot, you can build, backtest and execute algorithmic trading strategies in minutes. No coding skills required.

• AI for trading strategy creation: Use their AI copilot to help create a trading strategy based on your needs

• With one click, take the strategy generated by the AI and import it into a visual editor so you can see the logic more clearly and edit as needed

• Backtest with professional grade data and benchmark against other stocks and ETFs

With $1bn+ in trading volume, join the Composer community and start leveraging the power of algorithmic trading.

_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Bank of England surprises with 50 base point rate hike to tackle inflation (CNBC)

• Wall Street takes traditional finance to crypto (Axios)

• 401(k) plans have never been hotter, and it’s changing the market (CNN)

• Bud Light is at the end of the tunnel of controversy (YF)

• Amazon’s Prime Day to battle falling consumer spending (Axios)

• Remote work layoff personal finance advice (Slate)

• Bumble is testing a separate BFF app for finding friends (TC)

• The auction for Bed Bath & Beyond’s IP and digital assets (Axios)

• California no longer America’s most expensive state for gas (YF)

• Three former Credit Suisse CEOs sued for excessive risk taking (Reuters)

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

Rigging The Game

Why do some always seem to win while others always seem to fail? And why do others win and then fail to maintain their spot at the top?

Is it luck?

Not to spoil the contents of this book, but no…it isn’t.

To see consistent success in your own business, you're going to have to turn the magnifying glass on yourself.

Because the fact is, nothing you do—no action you take, no strategic financial decision you make—matters if it doesn't bring you closer to the things you really want.

So how do you ensure that you can ultimately reach (and fund) your priorities?

Rigging the Game is here to help you create and follow a path to the things you truly value, whatever they may be, and eliminate the risk and financial uncertainty that commonly plague business owners every single day.

"Successful people don't necessarily win all the time-and what we tend to label "good luck" is actually just preparedness for the known unknowns.”

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• 4 simple habits for building unshakeable confidence

• 2023’s most liveable cities

• The absurdity of NYC’s cycling tickets

• 12 skills that make up emotional intelligence

• The $5,750/month NYC apartment that only rents to vegans

_{SPONSORED BY BUENA FE}

Investing in Tequila Isn’t Just For Celebrities

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last two years, it certainly seems as if every celebrity has their own tequila company. Tequila has been on an unstoppable rise in popularity, and the excitement just keeps on flowing.

But that's not all. The other cool kid on the block is spirit-based ready-to-drink (RTD) products. Remember the splash White Claw and Truly made? Well, now folks are getting savvy and swapping these beer-cousins for higher quality spirit-based drinks.

So, here's where Buena Fé comes in, riding this wave with its organic, tequila-based RTDs. But get this - they're not playing around with any second-rate mixto tequila. No sir, Buena Fé's all about the real deal - 100% agave tequila.

These guys hit the scene in 2022 and have already made a splash in 12 states, scoring deals with major chains like Albertsons and Total Wine. Their impressive leadership team includes the former President of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

Buena Fé is inviting you to join the party and be a part of their growth and expansion. They're raising capital through crowdfunding, so you can become a proud owner of a tequila company*, and receive some excellent perks (including their “I’m not a celebrity but I do own a Tequila company” tee).

Unleash your inner celebrity and own a tequila company today.

_{DAILY VISUAL}

Americans are Giving to Charity at Lowest Level in Nearly 3 Decades

Charitable giving as a % of personal disposable income

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Ringelmann Effect

In 1913, a guy named Max Ringelmann noticed something strange about humans. Ringelmann, a French agricultural engineer, took a rope and asked individual people to pull on it.

Then he asked those same people to pull on the rope with a group. He observed that when people pulled with a group, they put in less effort than when pulling on their own.

We call it “the Ringelmann effect,” or social loafing. It describes the tendency for individual productivity to decrease as group size increases.

And it doesn’t just happen in tug-of-war games: It’s present in companies like Amazon and Facebook more than a century after Ringelmann’s discovery.

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

MEMES OF THE DAY