Issue 005 is here — the weekly business newsletter brought to you by Pretus. The free platform that helps you master the finance recruiting cycle with AI-driven interview prep for IB, CRE, WM, AM, & more + networking, behaviorals, and an exclusive ecosystem with 1 on 1 coaching and insights you can’t get anywhere else.

Two hundred and fifty years ago this Friday, thirteen colonies with no central bank, no unified currency, and no capital markets declared independence from the most powerful empire in the world. Today the United States runs the largest economy on earth.

The numbers that look good: GDP is growing at 2.2% in 2026. Employers added more than 500,000 jobs over the last three months, the strongest stretch of payroll growth in over two years. The stock market is near record highs. By the macro scoreboard, the economy is holding.

The numbers that tell a different story: the personal savings rate has dropped to 2.6%. Two-thirds of Americans say they're actively cutting back on spending due to higher prices. This weekend, 51% of July 4th shoppers plan to buy on sale specifically because they can't afford not to. Americans will still spend $2.2 billion on fireworks. But they're doing it more carefully than they used to.

The NYSE formally partnered with America250 this year, a fitting acknowledgment that capital markets are as much a part of the American story as the Declaration itself. The US built the world's most influential financial system in 250 years. What took centuries to build is still running. It's just running unevenly.

On June 29, Comcast announced it's splitting into two separate publicly traded companies. NBCUniversal, NBC, Peacock, Universal Pictures, Universal theme parks, and European pay TV operator Sky spin off on one side. Comcast's cable and connectivity business stays on the other. The deal is structured as a tax-free spinoff and is expected to close by mid-2027. Comcast shareholders will own stock in both companies when it's done.

Why companies do this: a cable business and a media business are fundamentally different animals. Cable generates stable, predictable cash flows. Media is a bet on content, streaming, and entertainment. Investors value them differently; a cable business might trade like a utility, while a media company trades on subscriber growth and content spend. When they're combined, each business drags on the other's valuation. A spinoff lets each trade at its own multiple, attract its own investors, and run its own strategy without the other in the way.

For your interviews, tax-free spinoffs, take-privates, and corporate restructurings are the bread and butter of M&A case studies. Know what a spinoff is. Know why it's done. Know what the tax-free structure means and why it matters to shareholders. This one is live right now.

Securitize lists on the New York Stock Exchange today under ticker SECZ. It's the first pure-play tokenization company ever to list on a major US exchange, and it's backed by BlackRock, which already has a $3 billion fund running on Securitize's platform.

Here's what tokenization actually is. Take a real-world asset, say a stock, a bond, or a real estate deed, and represent it as a digital token on a blockchain. That token can settle instantly, trade 24 hours a day, and move without a traditional intermediary. Securitize is doing this with real assets at scale: they've tokenized more than $4 billion in real-world assets and hold roughly 20% of the tokenization market.

The part nobody else is doing: Securitize is tokenizing its own stock on its own platform simultaneously with the NYSE listing. Traditional shares on NYSE settlement rails and blockchain-native tokens are capable of instant settlement and trading at the same time. That's never been done before.

Next issue: Send this to someone who needs it. Happy Fourth! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

— Clip’d by Pretus