Le Journal

Avala Global was launched by Divya Nettimi in 2022.imagedepotpro/Getty ImagesDivya Nettimi's $2 billion Avala Global has lost more personnel, Business Insider has learned.The firm returned 22.1% last year, according to the manager's year-end letter to investors.Nettimi launched her fund in late 2022 after a run at well-known Tiger Cub, Viking Global.Avala Global, launched by former Viking Global star trader Divya Nettimi, had strong performance numbers in 2025. However, the firm has continued to lose staff. Three investment analysts left in the second half of 2025, and Nettimi's fund is set to lose two more senior executives in 2026, including the firm's COO.Avala Global, the $2 billion manager launched by Nettimi in late 2022, gained 22.1% in 2025, according to the firm's year-end letter to clients, which was viewed by Business Insider. Several people close to the firm told Business Insider that the manager achieved these returns despite losing analysts Jordan Straff, Nadine Lin, and Michael Wang.Straff was a longtime investor at Roberto Mignone's Bridger Capital before joining Avala in early 2024, while Lin and Wang both joined from Steve Cohen's Point72.The manager will also lose its COO, David Angstreich, and top fundraiser, Rebecca Chia. Both are set to depart in the coming months, three people close to the firm tell Business Insider.Angstreich and Lin did not respond to requests for comment, while Chia and Straff declined to comment. Business Insider could not reach Wang in time for publication. Avala declined to comment.Angstreich has been with Avala since its launch, while Chia joined in mid-2025 after stints at Atalaya Capital and Third Point. The letter highlighted the team's "depth and experience" but made no mention of the departures or expected exits. The firm hired onetime Viking Global general counsel Andrew Genser as its in-house lawyer last year and added at least four new analysts in 2025, LinkedIn shows, including two end-of-year hires from private equity firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice."We believe we have laid a strong foundation for the next phase of our growth," the letter reads.Last June, Business Insider reported that a majority of Avala's day-one team had left the firm, including the entire four-person investing team that reported to Nettimi. Three people who had previously worked at the firm told Business Insider they left because of a tense workplace environment that came from the top of the firm. While she declined to address the specifics around different employees' exits, Nettimi told Business Insider last year that she was confident in her team and the process for finding and vetting new talent.Nettimi, a former Forbes 30 under 30 honoree who spent years investing at Viking Global, has managed to make money despite the churn. The firm has made more than 20% in each of the three full years it has been trading, besting the S&P 500 and Nettimi's former manager over the same period.The firm's most recent letter to investors stated that long-term holdings in stocks such as data-storage company Seagate Technology, German power company Siemens Energy, and Finnish sporting goods conglomerate Amer Sports were key in driving performance last year.Read the original article on Business Insider

Dr Pepper's commercial was featured during the College Football Playoff Championship game.G Fiume/Getty ImagesTikToker Romeo Bingham's viral Dr Pepper jingle was featured in a national primetime TV commercial.Their TikTok video gained over 44 million views and sparked widespread social media praise.Brands like Buffalo Wild Wings and Vita Coco have also reached out to Bingham.The power of TikTok propelled one user's content to primetime television, and people are loving it.TikToker Romeo Bingham, 25, is receiving an outpouring of support after their viral Dr Pepper jingle was picked up by the brand and used in a commercial that aired during Monday's College Football Playoff National Championship game. Social media users quickly caught onto the audio and praised the partnership. @kaitlynn_stone SO proud of you @Romeo!! Well deserved! 🥹❤️ #drpepper #goodandnice #drpepperjingle #nationalchampionshipgame #espn ♬ original sound - Kaitlynn Stone 🩵 "Dr Pepper, baby, it's good and nice," Bingham sang in a TikTok video posted December 23.As of Wednesday afternoon, the post had over 44 million views and 50,000 comments from users and brands alike. Bingham's video gained traction on TikTok before the jingle was featured in a TV commercial, prompting some users to predict a collaboration was on the horizon."I am waiting for Dr Pepper to offer a massive contract," one commenter said on December 29. @romeosshow @Dr Pepper please get back to me with a proposition we can make thousands together. #drpepper #soda #beverage ♬ original sound - Romeo Bingham and Dr Pepper did not reveal the terms of their deal and did not respond to requests for comment.Several companies, including Buffalo Wild Wings, Panera Bread, and Hyundai, have also pounced on Bingham's comments and requested jingles for their brands.Bingham created a song for Vita Coca, which the beverage brand posted on TikTok on January 16. @vitacoco @Romeo jingle stays on repeat #vitacoco #fyp #coconutwater #jingle #vitacocotreats ♬ original sound - Romeo The partnership between Bingham and Dr Pepper appeared to be in the works for a few weeks leading up to the game, which ESPN reported attracted over 20 million viewers in 2025. On December 31, Dr Pepper commented under Bingham's video, telling them to check their DMs. @speedymorman nah congrats queen @Romeo ♬ original sound - speedy Support for Bingham has continued, with users sharing videos and comments congratulating them on the collaboration. Others have chimed in, saying they hoped Bingham got a good payday.I hope that girl who did the Dr. pepper jingle got paid very well. Cause I just saw the commercial.— tyler (@tcas25) January 20, 2026 And the marketing strategy seems to be working for Bingham. As of Wednesday, Bingham is operating a website offering the Dr Pepper effect to brands."I'm buying a Dr Pepper just because," one user wrote on TikTok.Read the original article on Business Insider

ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty ImagesWall Street professionals say AI chatbots are not ready to replace core finance work.Finance leaders use AI for tasks such as summarizing books and presentations and organizing notes.AI chatbots serve as productivity tools but face limits in fiduciary and sophisticated finance roles.For all the hand-wringing about what AI will do to the white-collar workforce, the technology might not be impressive enough to replace the core work done in the finance industry yet, but Wall Street pros say it definitely has its uses. "If you're doing it for self-education, it's one thing, but I think it's quite hard to rely on a chatbot for fiduciary purposes if you're facing clients," said Maurits Pot, the founder of Tema ETFs.Other cite issues with AI "hallucinations," which can be a headache if you need to be precise with figures and data. "You don't use AI to do sophisticated things," said David Trainer, the founder of New Constructs, adding: "It's more trouble for me to use something and find out later that it's hallucinated than it is for me to just go get it from the source to begin with."And yet, a lot of people are using AI, and there are some creative ways Wall Street pros are deploying the technology. Here's how Wall Streeters say they are using chatbots to save them time and get an edge.Building your own Warren BuffettOne of the more interesting examples I heard comes from Lance Roberts, the CIO at RIA Advisors, which oversees around $2 billion. His team programmed 14 different AI agents to think like top investors, including Warren Buffett, Stanley Druckenmiller, Benjamin Graham, John Bogle, Cathie Wood, and others.These agents provide insights on anything from their views on the S&P 500 to individual stocks, Roberts said, and can help provide different perspectives when thinking about an investment case.Summarizing relevant books and giving feedback on papersAnother use case comes from Rob Arnott, the famed investor and founder of Research Affiliates. Last year at around this time, he was going to have his team read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" to prepare for Trump's second term. Trump has cited it as one of his favorite books, with one of its main takeaways being to find a way to get what you want without fighting. Instead, Arnott figured he'd send them a ChatGPT summary to ensure they'd get the main takeaways without having to take too much time out of their busy schedules.Arnott has also said he uses AI for detailed feedback on his papers, with his preferred chatbot being Perplexity."Perplexity is my preferred search engine, and has been for a couple of years now," he said in an email. "I try the other LLM's from time to time. The nice thing about Perplexity is that it's an AI of AIs: it chooses which AI is best suited to whatever question I have."Making presentationsIts biggest use case, however, seems to be administrative tasks, or assignments that lower-level staffers might have once tackled. As Seth Klarman, the CEO of Baupost Group, described it last summer: "essentially a capable assistant, a summer intern."David Elder, a wealth manager at Merit Financial Advisors, gave an example of a smaller task he might use a chatbot to save time on."I'm doing a presentation right now on intellectual property," Elder, who uses multiple chatbots including ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gamma, said. "I can have an interview with me and an intellectual property or business attorney, talk about it from multiple angles, dump that kind of recording into an AI, and turn that into a presentation."Organizing notesFor Chase Doyen, who works in business development for the London Stock Exchange Group in New York, it's an organizational tool. His firm has a subscription to Claude, Anthropic's chatbot."I use it for administrative tasks mostly," Doyen said.…

Big time football — like this month's college football championship — is the most dominant force in American culture. It won't always be that way, writer Chuck Klosterman argues in his new book.Set Number: X164821 TK1Are you ready for some football?Trick question: America is always ready for more football. It's an appetite without end.But writer Chuck Klosterman, who just devoted a book to the sport, says football's dominance will ultimately be its undoing.The notion that football is the biggest force in American culture and entertainment is so ingrained and obvious that it almost seems like something not worth mentioning.Chuck Klosterman feels otherwise: The pop culture writer just devoted an entire book to the sport, and its meaning and importance.But Klosterman also argues that football won't always be the main thing — and that its overwhelming size and scale will be the thing that eventually undermines it.I talked to Klosterman about all of that, as well as topics like the impact of video games on the sport, and why he thinks paying college football players is good for now, and really damaging in the long run. You can hear our entire conversation on my Channels podcast. What follows are edited excerpts from our chat.Peter Kafka: What is the point of a book called "Football" in 2026?Chuck Klosterman: I have been obsessed with sports and football my entire life. And probably 20 years ago, I made an unspoken, abstract decision — at some point, I want to do a book that's just about sports. My initial idea was that it was going to be about basketball, but I realized that's crazy: If you're writing about something that's part of the culture, football is the sport. It's the only one.If someone said to you, "Explain the last half of the 20th century through some idea, some metaphor," football is the thing to pick. It might not be the case for the 21st century, but it is for the end of the 20th century. And it is for the world we live in right now.One of the big changes in sports — and definitely in football — recently is the legalization of sports betting. It's omnipresent. You seem ambivalent-to-positive about it, which is not where I thought you'd end up.CHUCK: Do I think that gambling in this legalized way is bad for society? I would say probably, for all of the predictable reasons — particularly because it's on your phone and you've put your [financial information] in, so the money does not seem real. Even if it was just a situation where you had to feed dollar bills into it, everything would change.You're taking something that's addictive for some people and marrying it to your phone, which is also addictive for some people. It seems like an obvious way to get in trouble.CHUCK: But for football, it is good.Because it adds a different context for conversation about it. When I have a conversation with other dads, we'll talk about sports a lot, and then there'll be this other conversation. About gambling. We're still technically talking about football, but this is a whole different thing. It has a different context, a different meaning. It says more about the person.Some could argue that it's a weird argument for gambling being good. But if we look at football as a form of entertainment, a distraction, something to consume, to occupy yourself — I think gambling does make it more interesting.This is the pitch from the entire sports gambling industry — it improves the game, it adds stakes, it makes it more interesting. You seem to agree.Certainly there are people who feel that way. I think a lot of people I know who do a lot of gambling, they have a sort of mixed feelings about it — I think it does bother them that suddenly the game seems meaningless if they're not gambling on it.But for me, as somebody who doesn't really put money into it, I find it a fascinating…