Hello there.

Happy Wednesday, my dudes! There’s nothing like the sting of a surefire thing gone wrong. But don’t worry, we’re still up this quarter.

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There’ve been so many big-ticket M&A’s lately, it makes you wonder if there’s some sort of corporate imperative to conglomerate. Maybe one day, we’ll buy everyone from the same corporation. What would we call it? Blackrock? Hm… let’s dive in. 👇

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So PayPal was basically getting asked to prom by some pretty big names, and then everyone just... ghosted? A group led by Stripe (the payments company that powers like half the internet) and Advent (a massive private equity firm) was reportedly trying to buy PayPal for around $53 billion, or $60.50 per share. That's a lot of money for a company whose stock has been on a rough ride since 2021.

PayPal's stock dropped almost 13% when news broke that the deal was off. Shares had climbed nearly 30% since the whole buyout talk started in July, so investors were clearly betting on something happening. Now that the potential buyers walked away, that extra boost is evaporating fast.

Nobody's saying exactly why things fell apart. There’s not even an official statement about the situation yet. Some reports suggest PayPal's board thought the offer was too low, and there were probably questions about whether regulators would even approve combining two huge payments companies. Either way, PayPal is back to going it alone, still figuring out how to compete with everyone from Apple Pay to Cash App to, well, Stripe itself.

The main takeaway is that the quick-money buyout fantasy is gone for now. For now, at least, the company has to prove it can turn things around on its own merits, not just wait for someone with deep pockets to swoop in.

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If AI IPO excitement keeps rising this summer, these are the types of names investors may want to have on their radar.

The Federal Trade Commission and 22 states just sued Amazon, claiming the company secretly overcharged advertisers by billions of dollars. Specifically, they’re taking issue with those sponsored product listings you see when you search for something on Amazon. Businesses pay to show up there, and allegedly, Amazon was charging them way more than they realized.

Here's how it was supposed to work: Amazon runs an auction system where advertisers bid on ad spots. The winner pays just a tiny bit more than the second-highest bidder. Simple enough. But the FTC says Amazon started adding hidden fees back in 2018 that jacked up prices without telling anyone. They even allegedly created fake bidders to push prices higher. The FTC estimates this made Amazon an extra $20 billion from about 1.2 million advertisers, including tons of small businesses.

Amazon says the lawsuit "fundamentally misunderstands" how their ads work and claims they actually saved advertisers $8 billion over the past few years. They're planning to fight this in court.

This is the third major FTC lawsuit against Amazon. They already paid $2.5 billion last year over Prime subscription stuff, and there's a huge antitrust case headed to trial in 2027. For regular shoppers, the FTC's argument is that when advertisers pay more, those costs get passed down to you. So even if you never click on a sponsored listing, you might be paying for it anyway.

A lot can happen in a week!

Let’s take a quick look at who struck gold and who struck out since our last issue:

Space Exploration Mfg. Company (SPCX): +6.16%
Apple Inc. (AAPL): +4.62%
NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA): +4.20%
Microsoft Corporation (MSFT): +2.89%
Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM): +0.64%

Eli Lilly and Company (LLY): -6.78%
Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL): -3.85%
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): -2.82%
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK.A): -0.28%
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM): -0.24%

That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.

Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake of Invested Inc.