Good Morning! Hope you all had a great Fourth of July. A Lazard senior banker was fired for his wild and inappropriate behavior at a personal party over the weekend.

And the latest CEO compensation survey shows that nine CEOs made more than $100 million last year, including the CEOs of struggling companies like Hertz and Peloton (as well as the head honcho at TicketMaster’s parent company). The crown for highest-paid goes to Blackstone's CEO Stephen Schwarzman who made $253 million.

UBS is doubling down on wealthy Americans, going on a hiring spree for money managers as the bank plots a post-Credit Suisse merger future. More CFOs say they’re using ChatGPT to revolutionize accounting and finance functions. And the FAA gave the green light for the first-ever test of an electric flying car. The Model A, which costs $300k, already has $250M of pre-orders.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

Twitter Killer

In case you missed it, Twitter has really gone downhill lately. Since Elon’s big $44 billion midlife-crisis purchase last fall, the social media platform tweaked the algorithm to hide tweets from non-paying users, reports outages almost every week, and is seeing an exodus of younger users.

And Zuck's here for the chaos. He plans on releasing a rival app to Twitter called Threads. It'll be connected to Instagram and you can download it starting tomorrow.

Meta’s been hatching a plan to capitalize on the chaos for some time now. And in a noticeable chirp towards Twitter, the company is boasting internally that Threads will be a ‘sane’ alternative to Twitter with many of the same features.

Musk hasn’t made a statement yet. In fairness though, he could be in the gym prepping for this cage fight.

Takeaway: We’ve seen Meta copy features before, like Instagram stories from Snapchat. And with the company boasting 3 billion daily users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, there’s a reason why some are describing Threads as a potential ‘Twitter-killer’.

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks eked out a small gain to start the 2nd half of 2023.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Rivian ($RIVN) +17% after the EV company beat delivery estimates.

• (+) Tesla ($TSLA) +7% after beating Wall Street’s delivery and production expectations.

• (–) AstraZeneca ($AZN) -9% after disappointing clinical testing data.

Private Dealmaking

• Typeface, a generative AI startup, raised $100 million

• Reka, an AI model developer, raised $58 million

• Rose Rocket, a transportation management software provider, raised $38 million

• Cyware, a cybersecurity intelligence platform, raised $30 million

• Transak, a web3 payments startup, raised $20 million

• Fero Labs, a manufacturing process optimization software, raised $15 million

_{SPONSORED BY RYSE}

The Window to Invest is Closing

The smart home industry is entering a phase of consolidation, with a wave of acquisitions that have led to massive returns for smart-home investors:

• Smart vacuum iRobot acquired by e-commerce giant Amazon for $1.7B.

• Smart thermostat Ecobee acquired by power generation giant Generac for $770M.

And let’s not forget RING and Nest — acquired by Amazon and Google for $1B and $3.2B respectively.

The trend behind these acquisitions?

Innovative, patented products that have secured precious shelf space in retail stores. One up-and-coming company has checked all the boxes for building a successful smart home product.

RYSE is disrupting the automated shades industry — recently signing a deal with Best Buy to stock their patented product in 100+ stores.

The opportunity to invest in RYSE is open to the public for this month only - don’t miss it.

_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Why most restaurant stocks have surprised everyone in 2023 (YF)

• Is India the next China for investors? (CNBC)

• The Richcession keeps rolling (WSJ)

• US yield curve hit deepest inversion since 1981 (YF)

• Fintech M&A gets big boost with Visa-Pismo deal (TC)

• Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour set to earn $1 billion in sales (CNBC)

• UBS aims to avoid using $10 billion Credit Suisse backlash amidst backlash (Reuters)

• Fireworks cause $59 million of property damage every year (CNBC)

• A mid-year assessment for the U.S. economy (Axios)

• UK now only major economy where inflation is rising (CNBC)

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

Wonderhell

Instead of success bringing you happiness, it hands you an increased hunger to achieve something even bigger. And with that desire also comes uncertainty, self-doubt, anxiety and stress.

Success, in other words, is kinda wonderful ... but it’s also kinda hell. Welcome to Wonderhell.

Wonderhell is that space in your psyche where the burden of your newly discovered potential plops down, unpacks its backpack, and asks: Hey, you! Whatcha got for me?

Living in an ambitious, results-oriented society, we often mischaracterize the turbulent emotions that surround success, deeming them a “necessary evil” - a byproduct of one’s rise to the top.

We tend to think that we just need to survive these difficult moments, to hang on by our fingernails and somehow get through these stressful, unwanted side effects of our success. We torture ourselves with a never-ending internal dialogue: I can handle this. Can I handle this?

“Have you ever accomplished something you weren’t so sure you could do? Success has always been the end goal, but when you achieve it ... something infuriatingly predictable happens. You start wondering what more you can do.”

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• Why banks want to know your salary so badly

• Bryan Johnson’s 13 steps for a healthy life

• Digital nomads are the new gentrifiers

• How to deal with people who pretend to know more than they do

• 3 signs of toxic gratitude

_{SPONSORED BY BRILLIANT}

The Smartest Person in the Room

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They have thousands of bite-size, interactive lessons on everything from math and logic to data science and programming that make it easy to level up in just 15 minutes a day.

Brilliant's highly-visual, first-principles approach makes even complex topics feel insanely understandable. Plus, hands-on problem solving keeps you engaged, so it’s easy to build a daily habit.

Join over 10 million people around the world and start your 30-day free trial today. Plus, Short Squeez readers get 20% off an annual premium subscription.

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Luxury Goods

A luxury good gets its value from its lack of utility and value. A typical consumer would look at what it costs and what it does and say, “that’s ridiculous.”

The owner of a $12,000 Birkin bag might tell you that it’s worth every penny. Obviously, one can carry a wallet and a few other essentials in a bag that costs less than 1% of what this bag costs, and we can even imagine making something just like a Birkin for a fraction of the price.

But that would be a copy, not the real thing, and so the story, the narrative, the specialness and most of all, the social element would go out the window. A Birkin bag is at its most valuable when your friends admire you for owning it, not when they admire its ability to carry your stuff.

(via: Seth’s Blog)

_{JOB BOARD}

Featured Jobs

• JPMorgan Chase - VP - New Jersey

• Bloomberg - Analyst - New York, NY

• Prudential - Senior Analyst - Newark, NJ

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day