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Intel stock is on a dropping spree. We unpack why and what may change it. Years after a major security breach, Booz Allen loses a major client and loses on its share price. Valid stock move or overreaction, we break it down and Capital One is buying bracks. Who wins, who loses and where the market stands. On Monday, January 26, it's Brew Market Daily and Diamondbury. Market details to come. But first, one company's win is a venture capitalist. Major loss. In a time of hot valuations, pressure for OG Financials to stay ahead of disruptive tech, and a lot of VCs chomping at the bit to get their money out of long time investments, this deal caught our eye. Yes, this merger moment is the everything bagel of the market's focus points, public and private right now. Now Capital One Financial has stepped up for one of the biggest fintech transactions of the past year. The diversified financial holding company provides credit cards, auto loans, banking and savings products to both consumer and commercial clients. It's massive. It has a market cap of over $137 billion and based in McLean, Virginia. The company has been around for over 30 years. Now it's buying Brex, the San Francisco based fintech known for corporate credit cards and expense management software. Now Capital One is ponying up a combination of cash and stock, buying Brex for about $5.15 billion. It is the second major strategic move by Capital One in a relatively short time. It bought Discover Financial last year for $35 billion, a purchase that catapulted Capital One into the leagues of card giants like Visa and MasterCard. This Brex deal, once it closes in the second half of this year, adds to Capital One's business payments capabilities. And it's a jump into the fintech arena, bringing with it more than 25,000 Tech Forward customers and a modern API driven infrastructure. Now to some, Capital One is getting a bargain. And here's a bit of context for why Brex launched in 2017 to solve the challenges that startups often face when they try to get corporate cards. Sort of intuitive providers instead want clients that are more established businesses because there's less risk. Well, some of Brexit startup clients have turned into giants themselves like TikTok and Robinhood. For the most part it was really solving a genuine space, a gap in the market. As a result, Brex became a unicorn at breakneck speed. It joined the billion dollar valuation club in 2018. So again just had been founded 2017 and by 2022 it was valued more than $12 billion in its capital raises. Well, now Capital One is buying Brex at a nearly 60% cut to that peak valuation, which means Brexit's earliest investors like Y Combinator are still making a great return. They got an early enough and cheaply enough. But it's later. Investors like the hedge fund Tiger Global who came in later now face no return or even possibly a loss. But the market is still deciding if even this discount brings Capital One enough value for its five plus billion dollars in this acquisition. Because translating Brexit's tech platform and turning that into transformation across the sort of older, older, maybe stodgier, Capital One's massive scale is a big, big lift. And that uncertainty has manifested itself in Capital One stock price jumping around since the deal was announced on Thursday. It rose on the news. It also rose up a little bit today. But Capital One stock price is still fighting the overhang of President Trump's proposed 10% cap on interest rates on credit cards for a year long period. Well, in the private markets, venture capitalists are looking at this big discount, wondering if it's a concrete sign that those peak Covid valuations are never coming back, with investors instead choosing to sell out to get any money back rather than to keep on waiting for better times. Which is a theme that we're also going to keep on watching on the public side of the markets as tech IPOs ramp up this year, signaling the kinds of valuations at which longtime investors are truly willing to get out at. And in the meantime, we've learned some tough lessons. We've seen stocks like Warby Parker and Coinbase, which went public in the 2021 froth. Those really were peaks. They are still struggling to get their prices back up to those levels just a less. And that digging in behind the headlines tells us some things about entry price is everything when it comes to these returns coming on up. Even after an investment from the US Government, intel faces supply constraints, demand limitations and a drop in its share price. We'll take a look at the latest. But first a word from our sponsor, iherb. John, where do your supplements come from?