ValueAct Capital Mgmt, an activist investor, has taken a $1.1 billion stake in Morgan Stanley with 38 million shares that represent about 2% of shares outstanding. Unlike normal activists (at least for now), ValueAct took the stake not to push for changes at the company but because it believes the market has undervalued Morgan Stanley – WSJ and Bloomberg

Streetwise warns that the late 90s market fixation with anything bearing a “.com” suffix bears uncanny (and dangerous) parallels to today’s market rise [or melt-up, if you’d like] on the backs of central banks and their tiny bond yields. It’s less of a stretch than it sounds. Read on here – WSJ

Dealbook’s White Collar Watch looks at the wide gray area involved in the decision to pursue civil or criminal prosecution of insider trading and finds that—extremes aside—there’s often little keeping a sense of arbitrariness out of the proceedings – NYTimes

Yet more MBS news this week, as the 9th Circuit yesterday revived NCUA claims that Nomura “misrepresented troubled home loans” behind MBS it sold – Law360

Ride-hailing service Lyft has turned down a takeover offer from 9% stakeholder GM, but Breakingviews suggests the bid is likely the first of many that may force Lyft into a merger – NYTimes

Meanwhile, why the looming threat of a Mondelez takeover makes an entire town more than a little uneasy – WSJ

The SEC shut down trading of shares in Neuromama Ltd.—a self-described “leader in technology, innovation & research”—yesterday over concerns that false information had inflated the value of the unlisted company to $35 billion – WSJ and Bloomberg and Law360

Finally, apropos of little more than a nod to the humanities, here’s a great longread on Hieronymus Bosch, the renaissance Flemish painter who seems to share as much with contemporary Leonardo DaVinci as with surrealists like Salvador Dali, nearly 500 years his junior – NY Review