Good Morning and Happy Friday! NBA’s Boston Celtics were sold for a record $6.1 billion to group led by private equity exec Bill Chisholm. Gold is set to hit $3,200 over the next three months, according to Citi.

Trump ordered the Education Department closed and pressured the Fed to cut rates to soften the blow from tariffs. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick broke typical Executive Branch protocol, urging Americans to buy the dip and load up on Tesla stock.

Accenture is rattled by Trump cuts, and DoorDash debuted “eat now, pay later” so you can split your burrito cost into four interest-free installments.

Plus: Apple TV+ is losing $1B a year, U.S. households are now more invested in stocks than ever before, and UBS is weighing relocating its headquarters out of Switzerland.

That Amex bill from last weekend isn't going to pay itself. Shift the debt, earn 2% cash back, and keep the party going.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

Wall Street's 2025 Purge

Wall Street’s annual layoffs are underway. But this year in 2025, it's not just underperformers getting pink slips.

Bulge brackets like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America, are aggressively cutting thousands of jobs, and it could be a signal for deeper shifts in the industry.

Economic uncertainty, sluggish dealmaking, and Trump-era trade policy anxieties are causing dealmakers to be cautious.

Morgan Stanley is preparing to cut around 2,000 jobs by the end of Q1, across both front-office and back-office roles. Goldman Sachs is trimming 3–5% of its global workforce — in line with its usual annual performance-based cuts. Bank of America recently let go of 150 junior bankers, while JPMorgan Chase, though not announcing large-scale layoffs, is quietly scaling back hiring after bringing on 50,000 employees over the past four years.

So, why the urgency?

Typically, banks reassess staffing after bonuses are paid. But this year, market dynamics are forcing their hand. Hopes for a Trump-fueled rebound in IPOs and M&A activity have largely fizzled, with dealmaking stagnating and investors wary of lingering tariff risks.

Takeaway: Morgan Stanley has labeled its layoffs as an "efficiency” exercise, denying any connection to market conditions. Still, many insiders view these moves as early signs of a broader realignment across Wall Street.

Banks are still hopeful for a dealmaking comeback later in 2025, but the harsh reality of rising costs, declining revenues, and economic uncertainty means they're tightening belts now to brace for tougher days ahead.

_{PRESENTED BY FINANCEBUZZ}

The Credit Hack Everyone Should Know

If there’s one thing Wall Street knows, it’s leverage. But while you're busy structuring LBOs, have you ever thought about optimizing your personal leverage?

Enter the 0% intro APR balance transfer card, here’s how it works:

• 0% interest until nearly 2027 – Move your high-interest debt and pay it down on your own terms.

• 2% cash back on purchases – Finally, a card that pays you back for those client dinners.

• No annual fee – Because adding another card fee is rookie behavior.

Finance is all about strategy—why not use the same mindset on your personal balance sheet? Thankfully, FinanceBuzz did the research so you don’t have to. Here’s the card that helps you do it.

_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Boston Celtics sold for $6.1 billion to Sixth Street’s Bill Chisholm (CNBC)

• Citi hikes gold price target to $3,200 (YF)

• Klarna lands BNPL deal with DoorDash ahead of IPO (CNBC) 

• Musk’s DOGE hires Ken Griffin staffer for national security work (YF)

• Trump signs order to begin dismantling US education department (BBC)

• Howard Lutnick pumps Tesla stock (Fortune)

• Nike’s sales are tumbling (CNN)

• SoftBank to buy Ampere for $6.5B (NYT)

• Apple TV+ is losing $1B a year (TI)

• Trump says Fed would be much better off lowering rates as tariffs start (YF)

• Three big deals have Trump in common (Axios)

• Accenture rattled by Trump cuts (WSJ)

• U.S. households are more invested in stocks than ever (CNBC)

• UBS explores moving headquarters unless Switzerland cuts capital demand (BB)

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks Slip as Fed Glow Dims, Economy Slows but Holds

Stocks dropped Thursday as materials and consumer staples dragged markets post-Fed rally.

Asia mixed after China’s central bank stuck at 3.1%; Europe fell, with banks and autos hit hardest, as the Bank of England held at 4.5%.

10-year Treasury yields eased to 4.24%, the U.S. dollar rose but sits 5% off January’s high, and WTI oil climbed on new Iran sanctions.

Jobless claims ticked to 223,000 (vs. 224,000 expected), above 2024’s 223,000 weekly average—federal layoffs loom, but a 4.1% unemployment rate and job openings outpacing seekers signal a solid labor market, with wages beating inflation.

The Leading Economic Index (LEI) dipped 0.3% to 101.1, hit by weak consumer vibes and manufacturing orders, though a rising six-month trend and S&P 500 gains soften recession fears.

Growth’s cooling amid policy fog, but pro-growth moves like deregulation could spark a late-2025 rebound.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Cava ($CAVA) +5% after the fast casual chain was upgraded by JPMorgan.

• (–) Accenture ($ACN) -7% because the consultant company warned DOGE will eat away at bookings.

• (–) Rigetti Computing ($RGTQ) -9% after a sell-off in quantum computing stocks.

Private Dealmaking

• Kyivstar acquired Uklon for $155 million

• Dataminr, an analytics company, raised $85 million

• Ampersand Biosciences, a biotech, raised $65 million

• Graphite, a code review platform, raised $52 million

• GrubMarket, a food B2B marketplace, raised $50 million

• Curve, a digital wallet, raised $48 million

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

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

Hate The Game

Should I buy or rent? Do I ask for a promotion? Should I tell people I’m pregnant? What salary do I deserve? Should I just quit this job?

Common anxieties about life are often grounded in economics.

In an increasingly win-lose society, these economic decisions—where to work, where to live, even how to live—have a way of feeling fixed and mistakes terminal.

Daryl Fairweather is no stranger to these dynamics. As the first Black woman to receive an economics PhD from the famed University of Chicago, she saw firsthand how concepts of behavioral economics and game theory were deployed in the real world—and in her own life—to great effect.

Hate the Game combines Fairweather’s elite knowledge of these principles with her singular voice in describing how they can be harnessed. Her great talent, unique among economists, is her ability to articulate economic trends in a way that is not just informative, but also accounts for life’s other anxieties.

In Hate the Game, Fairweather fixes her expertise and service on navigating the earliest economic inflection points of adult life: whether to go to college and for how long; partnering, having kids, both, or neither; getting, keeping, and changing jobs; and where to live and how to pay for it.

She speaks in actionable terms about what the economy means for individual people, especially those who have the sneaking suspicion they’re losing out.

Set against her own experiences and enriched with lessons from history, science, and pop culture, Fairweather instructs readers on how to use game theory and behavioral science to map out options and choose directions while offering readers a sense of control and agency in an economy where those things are increasingly rare.

“The secret insights of economics, translated for the rest of us.”

_{DAILY VISUAL}

Stocks Throw Off More Cash Than Ever

_{PRESENTED BY HEBBIA}

Delegate Your Diligence

Finance professionals need tools that work as hard as they do. Hebbia’s Matrix delivers powerful solutions to streamline your workflow and give you a competitive edge.

Here’s how top firms use Hebbia:

• Summarize 200+ earnings calls annually without breaking a sweat.

• Review offering memorandums 5x faster to keep pace with changing markets.

• Identify red flags, compare risks, and extract critical terms in minutes.

• Turn diligence notes into investment memos that impress.

Whether you’re tracking opportunities, managing risk, or drafting memos, Hebbia helps finance teams get more done in less time—without sacrificing quality.

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Lifetime of Change

Zoom out, and tech’s pace is staggering—stone tools took 2.4 million years to evolve into fire control, while the last century alone birthed planes, moon landings, and smartphones.

Today’s breakneck speed—unimaginable to medieval minds—hints at a future we can’t yet grasp.

From writing to the Internet, or the Wright brothers to Apollo, innovations once unthinkable now shape daily life.

AI looms as the next game-changer, potentially shrinking decades of progress into a year by amplifying human ingenuity.

History screams two truths: tech accelerates relentlessly, and its power—think vaccines or nukes—demands we steer it wisely.

Our ancestors wouldn’t recognize today; tomorrow’s tech could just as easily stun us.

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• 5 ways to avoid the people pleaser trap at work

• How to get real about measuring to outcomes

• How much water to drink every day

• 4 types of bosses and how to work with each one

• How to get better at delegating

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day