Your Daily Career Tarot Card Reading for July 8th, 2025
8.7.25 The World: It's time to take center stage and show the world what you can do. If you've invested a lot of energy into your business or career pursuits, then the ability to market yourself in the right way may be crucial to your success. It's worthwhile doing what you can to impress the right people and get your message out there, as the rewards can be tremendous.
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The National
30 minutes ago
- The National
Sequoia Capital partner Maguire's posts on Mamdani leads to founder petition
A growing list of start-up founders are circulating an open letter to Sequoia Capital urging the prominent venture capital firm to take action against one of its partners, Shaun Maguire. The letter, which had more than 520 digital signatories as of Monday afternoon, follows a July 4 post on X in which Mr Maguire referred to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as an 'Islamist'. Mr Maguire, an avid X poster best known for his investments in SpaceX and xAI, claimed in the controversial X post that Mr Mamdani 'comes from a culture that lies about everything' and is willing to lie 'if it advances his Islamist agenda'. The signatories, not all of which could be immediately verified, include start-up executives, employees and venture capitalists from around the world, as well as entrepreneurs who have raised from funds affiliated with Sequoia. Among them are Hosam Arab, chief executive of Tabby, and Hisham Al Falih, chief executive of Lean Technologies – co-founders of Saudi FinTech start-ups that raised funding from Sequoia Capital India before it separated from Sequoia Capital in the US, they said. Ahmed Sabbah, co-founder of Egyptian payments company Telda, which raised funding from Sequoia in 2021, also signed the letter. Mr Al Falih said in an email that he does not endorse Mr Mamdani but found Mr Maguire's comments over the holiday weekend 'appalling'. 'His tweet was not only a sweeping and harmful generalisation of Muslims, but part of a broader pattern of Islamophobic rhetoric that has no place in our industry,' Mr Al-Falih said. After Mr Maguire's comments went viral, he responded with a 30-minute video posted to X on Sunday in which he apologised several times for offending anyone. He said that Islamism is a political ideology, not a race or religion and clarified that his primary concerns are with Mr Mamdani's father, Mahmood Mamdani, a Columbia University professor who Mr Maguire says practices 'radical left-wing Islamism'. Mr Maguire declined to comment beyond the video. A representative for Sequoia Capital declined to comment. A representative for Mr Mamdani's campaign did not respond to a request for comment. The open letter, a rare show of defiance against one of the most powerful and influential VC firms, calls for Sequoia to make a public apology for Mr Maguire's actions. It also asks that Sequoia launch an investigation into his conduct, publish a zero‑tolerance policy on hate speech and create a hotline for founders to safely report discrimination or hate speech made by Sequoia employees. The letter asks for a formal response to these demands by July 14. 'As founders building the future of technology, we cannot accept leadership from a firm whose partners engage in hate speech and spread bigotry,' the letter states. 'Maguire's conduct not only tarnishes Sequoia's reputation, it also undermines your ability to serve a global, diverse founder ecosystem.' Other tech workers who signed the letter include Mudassir Sheikha, co-founder and chief executive of the Uber-owned Middle Eastern ride-hailing company Careem; Omar Almajdouie, the founding partner of Saudi investment firm Raed Ventures; and Zaheer Mohiuddin, chief executive of Cupertino-based start-up the executives confirmed in emails to Bloomberg. Eslam Hussein, co-founder and chief executive of Dubai-based start-up Invygo and another signatory, said he signed the letter because '[Mr] Maguire's comments were Islamophobic and completely unacceptable, especially coming from someone in a leadership role at one of the most powerful firms in venture capital'. Mr Maguire is known in VC and technology circles for his frequent X posts and controversial statements. In January, he posted a photo of himself at one of the presidential inaugural celebrations in Washington DC. Later that same month, he called diversity, equity and inclusion policies 'structural racism'. Last year, shortly after Donald Trump, at the time US presidential candidate, was convicted of falsifying business records, Mr Maguire wrote in a lengthy post on X that he had donated $300,000 to Mr Trump's campaign for the presidency. The post included a disclaimer clarifying that his views did not reflect those of his employer, and that he was 'lucky to work at a place that tolerates spirited debate and independent thinking'.
Zawya
2 hours ago
- Zawya
Investors to double down on US junk bonds on another tariff tantrum
When President Donald Trump's 90-day pause on U.S. tariffs ends Wednesday, once-bitten-twice-shy bond investors could take on more risk by adding high-yield bonds to portfolios, rather than panic-sell credit as seen after April 2's 'Liberation Day' tariff announcement, said many fund managers and bankers. Credit market shops as a whole are likely to avoid a knee-jerk reaction to sell the riskiest bonds in their portfolios, and instead buy them as they view any impasse on tariff negotiations as a way to a watered-down solution rather than a non-negotiable outcome, the fund managers and bankers said. "Investors are likely to take any news of a tariff deadline extension in their stride and not overreact because there is always a put with this government – they will find some resolution to any impasse like they did post-Liberation Day,' said Sandeep Desai, co-head of North America leveraged debt capital markets at Deutsche Bank. High-yield credit spreads, or the premium paid by companies over risk-free Treasuries, touched their widest levels in two years in the days after Liberation Day, when Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs on 57 countries. Widening spreads mean an increase in borrowing costs and reflect market perceptions of a rise in default risk. But this negativity did not last beyond a fortnight, and spreads are now a whopping 149 basis points (bps) inside those levels as of last week's close, according to ICE BofA Global data.. On Wednesday, expectations of some sort of deal-making got a boost when Trump announced that the U.S. had struck a deal for a lower-than-promised 20% tariff on many Vietnamese exports. A retracement in spreads showed credit investors were simply not worried that the macroeconomic impact of tariffs would lower the ability of a broad swathe of companies with the riskiest credit ratings to make interest payments on their debt. The conviction in their fundamentals was so strong that even extreme geopolitical events - including an escalating war between Israel and Iran in late June - failed to push junk bond credit spreads or the default risk gauge wider. "There definitely seems to be a lot of looking through the headlines and what would, in prior periods, have served as extreme sources of volatility," said Michael Levitin, managing director and co-head of liquid credit at MidOcean Partners. For Joseph Lynch, global head of non-investment-grade credit at Neuberger Berman, it was a case of investors appreciating the improved quality of the high-yield bond universe. More debt has become secured by a certain amount of collateral, while more companies are using new deal proceeds to optimize their balance sheets rather than for leveraged buyouts, he said. Over the past five years, the percentage has increased to nearly 35% from 20% of U.S. high-yield bonds secured by collateral like physical assets or even shares, noted Jennifer Haaz, investment specialist at Penn Mutual Asset Management, in a recent report. These had a higher recovery rate than those that were unsecured in case of a default, she added. The extra security of collateral also helped companies reduce the cost of their debt, which investors viewed as a sign of more prudent balance sheet management by companies. HUNT FOR YIELD Junk-rated debt was also offering yields between 7% and 8%, which investors saw as more than compensating for any default risk when improved fundamentals were taken into account. This has increased demand, which has in turn created what bankers called a supply-demand imbalance and pressured spreads tighter. U.S. high-yield funds saw outflows of $8.42 billion in April after Liberation Day, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. But since then the direction of flow has reversed with high-yield funds receiving roughly $13 billion of inflows between May 1 and June 25. But only $149.8 billion in new U.S. junk bonds have been issued so far this year, versus more than $165.5 billion this time last year, according to JPMorgan research published last Friday. "You have a situation where the supply of bonds is just not keeping up with the demand," said Piers Ronan, head of debt capital markets at Truist Securities. Spreads could widen slightly, if at all, come Wednesday. If they do, Berman's Lynch said, "we could be allocating more capital to high-yield." (Reporting by Matt Tracy and Shankar Ramakrishnan Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Zawya
2 hours ago
- Zawya
US SEC's guidance is first step toward rules governing crypto ETFs
New U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission guidance on disclosure requirements for exchange-traded products tied to cryptocurrencies marked the first step toward approval of dozens of applications for ETFs linked to everything from Solana and XRP to President Donald Trump's eponymous meme coin. The guidance, issued last Tuesday, signaled a dramatic shift by Republican leadership in how the top U.S. markets regulator deals with the crypto sector. The SEC has launched a task force to draft new regulations, refocused its crypto enforcement team and paused or altogether walked away from high-profile enforcement cases that many thought the agency was winning. The 12-page document is the first part of the new landscape for crypto funds that SEC staff members are designing. Asset managers also anticipate guidance from the SEC's division of trading and markets on ways to streamline the application process, said people familiar with the discussions. This should accelerate the pace for new product debuts. "The SEC is moving forward on creating a framework for how they'd like to see all these crypto assets included in investment funds" to address the "explosion" in the number of ETFs now awaiting a regulatory verdict, said Sui Chung, CEO of crypto index provider CF Benchmarks. Industry participants said they saw few surprises so far. "The most interesting and important thing about this guidance is that it exists," said Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset Management, which has more than half a dozen crypto ETFs awaiting SEC approval. "It suggests that the SEC acknowledges that crypto ETPs are becoming part of the mainstream and so it's trying to lay down rules of the road to save both issuers and SEC staff time and hassle." The SEC guidance spells out that in order to be approved, issuers must clearly address, in "plain English", all factors that make crypto-based ETFs distinctive, such as custody arrangements and risks of the hyper-competitive landscape. The next document, however, is likely to prove more significant. According to several people familiar with the ongoing discussions, who could not speak publicly due to the confidentiality of those proceedings, the SEC staff is seeking to create a new listing template to replace the current need for exchanges to submit a special form each time they want to list a new crypto product. That form, known as a 19(b)4, asks for an exemption from current listing rules for the specific ETF. Eliminating that from the process could cut the time between filing and launch dates from as much as 240 days to only 75 days. "The SEC is looking for a general rule it can apply to all listings, and currently is going back and forth on precise wording with the exchanges," said a senior executive at one issuer, who added he expected that exchanges will submit that kind of general filing within "days or weeks." Officials at the Nasdaq Stock Market and Cboe declined to comment on these talks; the New York Stock Exchange did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the SEC also declined comment on the discussions. While ETFs tied to the spot prices of everything from coins like XRP, Polkadot, Dogecoin and the Trump meme coin await an SEC verdict, issuers expect the next batch of crypto products will be tied to Solana, the world's sixth-largest cryptocurrency. That likely will not happen until after the SEC has rolled out the second part of its guidance, pushing the launch date into early autumn, issuers said. Some asset managers are not waiting. Last week, REX Financial and Osprey Funds used a more indirect and complex approach to launch the first U.S. ETF to give investors exposure to Solana, the REX-Osprey Sol + Staking ETF . In contrast to the half-dozen spot Solana ETFs awaiting approval, it invests in a separate entity that in turn will own both Solana and a non-U.S. Solana fund. That structure means REX can bypass the rules governing those commodity funds and leapfrog other issuers, as well as offering investors access to yield via the cryptocurrency "staking" mechanism. In staking, cryptocurrency holders volunteer to take part in validating transactions on the blockchain, checking that the ledger all adds up. In return, validators either receive a share of the transaction fees or newly created cryptocurrencies. "We do think the SEC is taking big steps forward in dealing with cryptocurrency, but it's still the SEC, and not everything has been codified yet," Greg King, CEO of REX Financial, told Reuters. King acknowledged he is trying to get a head start on what is expected to be a fiercely competitive race for market share on new Solana products. The new ETF pulled in $12 million of assets on its first day of trading on Wednesday, July 1, King said. "We'll probably do a spot Solana ETP too, once those rules are in place," he added. "There's no either/or in this situation." (Reporting by Suzanne McGee; additional reporting by Chris Prentice, Editing by Alden Bentley and David Gregorio)
