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Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• Anthropic Will IPO Next Thursday for $1.33 Trillio …

• Top Bankers Set To Score 30% Bonus Hikes This Year

• SkyDance Plans $6B in Cost Cuts for 2027

• Inflation Eased Less Than Expected in October

• Surprise: Dystopic Sci-Fi Wins the Booker Prize

• Poll of the Day: Bonus Advice

• Poll of the Day: Two Huangs Don’t Make A Right

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.38% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.3% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$ANT ( 0.0% )  $GS ( ▲ 0.44% )  $MS ( ▲ 0.25% )  $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.27% )  $SPCX ( ▲ 0.72% )  $AMD ( ▲ 1.3% )  

Anthropic Will IPO Next Thursday for $1.33 Trillion

Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▼ 0.75% ) , the creator of Claude, is marching onto Wall Street under the delightfully ironic ticker “ANT” $ANT ( 0.0% ) . In what markets are treating as a high-stakes litmus test for the AI boom, the company announced in an SEC filing that it will sell 825 million shares at $70 to $78 apiece, aiming to raise over $61 billion at the midpoint. Layer on an additional private placement of up to $26 billion from Google $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.27% ) and AMD $AMD ( ▲ 1.3% ) , and Anthropic could pocket more than $80 billion — overshadowing the $75 billion cash haul from SpaceX’s $SPCX ( ▲ 0.72% ) summer debut.

“A person familiar with the matter” said shares should begin trading next Thursday.

Behind the scenes, executives have been huddling with underwriters from Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 0.44% ) and Morgan Stanley $MS ( ▲ 0.25% ) to navigate the classic banker dilemma: Aim too high and risk an embarrassing drop, or pitch too low and leave billions on the table. In fact, $1.33 trillion is practically a bargain-bin figure compared to the $2 trillion valuation floated months ago, or the $1.5 trillion expected before last week’s AI sell-off made jittery investors demand a haircut.

Still, with an annualized revenue run rate of roughly $81 billion, Anthropic easily edges out rival OpenAI’s latest $1.25 trillion valuation mark. And with insiders cashing out roughly 23.6 million shares, that is quite a feast for an ant!

Quote of the Day

Top Bankers Set To Score 30% Bonus Hikes This Year

If you were worried Wall Street might be struggling with inflation like the rest of us, you can wipe away those tears. 2026 has been crowned the “year of the bank,” and finance’s apex predators are preparing for the fattest bonus haul in history.

According to compensation consultant Johnson Associates, top stock traders and equity underwriters are in line for whopping 20% to 30% bonus spikes. Across 15 major institutions, bonus pools are expected to jump 15% on average, blowing past New York’s prior record of $49.2 billion. As managing director Alan Johnson bluntly summed it up to the New York Post, last year was good, “and this [year] is even better,” calling the entire sector “very healthy, maybe euphoric.”

I’ll be going out for steak dinner in Manhattan on Saturday night with a couple of finance guys, and I think I might do “the slow lean” for my wallet when it comes to paying….

So how is Wall Street printing record profits after City Hall gloomily predicted a bust? By letting AI automate the grunt work while quietly pruning payrolls. Instead of armies of young analysts grinding out pitch books at 3:00 a.m., bots are handling the heavy lifting. As Johnson observed, “Critical or excellent people are worth more, and you don’t need as many of them. But average people are worth less and replaceable.” He added that across trading desks, “you’re going to have fewer associates, analysts, vice presidents. I think that’s happening. I think technology is replacing people.”

Look no further than Goldman Sachs $GS ( ▲ 0.44% ) , where the compensation bill jumped 17% to $16.6 billion even as head count fell 2%. As Goldman President and COO John Waldron put it, AI allows the bank to “scale the firm, be more valuable to our clients” without going on a hiring spree. Enjoy the feast while it lasts, though. Johnson warned that 2026 likely marks a peak before a tougher 2027: “You rarely see everything being good at the same time.”

SkyDance Plans $6B in Cost Cuts for 2027

Skydance $SKYD ( ▼ 7.59% ) is celebrating its colossal media merger by immediately taking a $6 billion machete to the furniture.

Fresh-off swallowing Warner Bros. Discovery whole, David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz’s newly minted entertainment behemoth is facing the brutal morning-after reality of an eye-watering $87 billion in gross debt against just $10 billion in cash. Their solution? An aggressive corporate diet designed to wring $6 billion in operational savings over three years, realizing 30% in year one. CEO David Ellison and Co-CEO Ynon Kreiz have said they are “confident” the company can deliver the promised $6 billion in cost cuts.

Where does that $6 billion actually vanish from? At least $2.2 billion will be axed from corporate overhead and real estate, $1.4 billion from technology, and $1 billion (a clean 20%) from marketing budgets. Meanwhile, a game of executive musical chairs is in full swing: DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran abruptly stepped down to return to creative duties, replaced by Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham. It certainly didn't help that Warner Bros.’ movie slate is dinging fourth-quarter profits by up to $200 million, thanks in part to Tom Cruise’s big-budget dark comedy Digger belly-flopping.

To stay alive against Netflix $NFLX ( ▼ 1.08% ) , Disney $DIS ( ▲ 0.08% ) , and TikTok, Skydance is launching an HBO Max and Paramount+ bundle early next year. And in the ultimate corporate disappearing act, Skydance announced it will stop reporting quarterly subscriber figures altogether. After all, why let messy subscriber metrics ruin the plot?

Song of the Day: Tiger Lewis, ‘Lonely Guy’

"Lonely Guy" by Tiger Lewis is a self-assured “grunge groove” anthem about reclaiming personal empowerment after experiencing a deep loss or identity shift. So, it’s a lot like this newsletter.

Inflation Eased Less Than Expected in October

Just when Americans thought our grocery bills might stage a modest surrender, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered October’s inflation report with all the subtlety of a flashbang.

Consumer prices crept up 0.4% month-on-month — a slight deceleration from September’s 0.6%, but uncomfortably hotter than the 0.3% economists had cheerfully penciled in. To make matters weirder, the government could not even provide an annual inflation rate because last year’s shutdown prevented data collection in October 2025. Apparently, what Washington doesn't measure can still hurt you.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel, held stubbornly firm at 0.3%, completely ignoring consensus forecasts that it would drop to 0.2%. As Josh Hirt, senior economist at Vanguard, bluntly put it, “Core inflation today reflects three outsized shocks: tariffs, energy prices, and AI-related demand.” 

For the Federal Reserve, this was the economic equivalent of stepping on a rake. Central bankers were already debating how to subdue persistent price pressures after hiking rates in September. Fed Governor Chris Waller had already warned that if core metrics stayed sticky, policymakers should contemplate a 50-basis-point sledgehammer. As Jeff Schulze, head investment strategist at the Franklin Templeton Institute, told the Financial Times, “Today’s hot October core CPI print leaves a December rate hike all but signed, sealed, and delivered after Governor Waller’s notably hawkish remarks.”

George Brown, senior economist at Schroders, echoed the mounting dread, noting the data “adds to evidence that the U.S. economy is running too hot for comfort” and “leaves the Fed with more work to do.”

Meanwhile, voters already rendered their verdict: Fueled by the Iran war and runaway living costs, midterm backlash flipped both chambers of Congress to Democrats.

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

Surprise: Dystopic Sci-Fi Wins the Booker Prize

At 81, speculative fiction veteran M John Harrison became the oldest winner in the Booker Prize’s 57-year history for The End of Everything, a darkly funny post-apocalyptic romp through a governmentless, isolated Britain.

In Harrison’s vision, mysterious alien invaders called the iGhetti — sporting a suspiciously tech-bro name — colonize the world's financial capitals while continental Europe has been somehow “mislaid.” Amid everyday civilizational collapse, a beachcomber and his 70-year-old artist aunt rescue an alien “artefact” from the sea that rapidly balloons to human size, develops a dapper fashion sense, learns to drive cars, and delivers deadpan philosophical observations.

If traditionalists worried that the prize was handing out a sentimental retirement gift, chair of judges Mary Beard dismissed the thought, insisting that “this was not a lifetime achievement award.” Instead, Beard crowned the book “the politics of now seen through the lens of the future,” explaining that despite its apocalyptic premise, the novel “turns you upside down, raises a wry smile — and surprisingly, given the subject matter, leaves you with a twinge of optimism.”

Gaby Wood, chief executive of the Booker Prize Foundation, highlighted that Harrison is “the first Booker winner to have emerged from the bona fide SF world,” adding that the book “knows everything about the novel form, and exactly what it’s doing when it breaks it.”

Writer Olivia Laing once called Harrison “the missing evolutionary link between William Burroughs and Virginia Woolf.” It seems that sci-fi could almost be realism in 2026, eh?

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

Leave it well alone for a few weeks, honestly.

Poll of the Day: Bonus Advice

Poll of the Day: Two Huangs Don’t Make A Right

We asked: Will Jensen Huang survive the honeypot scandal?

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Anything other than strict monogamy is unforgivable if you're a leader in modern America. Just ask Stormy Daniels. Or any of the women Elon Musk has had kids with and then ditched. Actually scratch that. He'll be fine. (188)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I only hope he finally decides to ditch the too-tight leather jackets as a sign of his new humility. (57)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No. He'll have to go because we have double standards in this country and it's important to uphold them. 'MURRRRCA. (72)
317 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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