What you need to know on Wall Street right now

The merger madness continues.

• General Electric is merging its oil and gas business with Baker Hughes
• CenturyLink is buying Level 3 Communications for $34 billion
• CenturyLink is tanking after the announcement
• The deals are all about synergies
• Blackstone is buying TeamHealth in a $6.1 billion deal
• Wall Street banks are celebrating
• A lot of people are going to get rich(er) at one tiny Wall Street firm

In hedge fund news, Brevan Howard - one of the industry's biggest names - has received redemption requests for an additional $2 billion from the firm's flagship fund this year, according to people familiar with the matter. A hot new hedge fund backed by Stan Druckenmiller is closing in on a big launch.

And Carson Block told us he regrets not having shorted one stock in 2016.

Ex-Barclays boss Antony Jenkins just launched a fintech startup. The CEO of $1.7 billion software company Xero says AI will be "transformational" for finance. And the CEO of BT thinks the global jobs market is on "the cusp of a radical transformation."

Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a major supporter of Republican nominee Donald Trump, said that Trumpism "isn't crazy and it's not going away" during a major speech in front of the National Press Club on Monday.

There's a good argument that Apple should buy Netflix.

Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's solar roof and new Tesla Energy products. Musk has also finally figured out how Tesla can deal with Uber, according to Business Insider's Matt DeBord.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday

EINHORN SLAMS TESLA: "Years of over-promising and under-delivering from a promotional CEO" - David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital just threw shade on Elon Musk's Tesla.

Billionaire investor Steve Schwarzman had the perfect explanation for middle-class anger - A big chunk of the US population should feel "scared" and "insecure," according to Steve Schwarzman, CEO of alternatives giant The Blackstone Group.

The hyper-connectivity revolution has taken global risk to extremes - The huge rise in global instability, keeping everyone awake at night, is characterized by senior military and diplomatic officials as the "most high-risk and unpredictable environment in their working lives."

Things are starting to rumble in Southeast Asia - Political risk could be on the rise in two Southeast Asian countries.

A standard statistical model for stock prices is probably wrong - The idea that returns from financial assets are normally distributed underpins many traditional financial theories, but the reality is that many (even most) assets do not conform to this.

You're in denial. The UK economy is heading off a cliff - The UK showed its strength in Q3. Data out last week showed the economy grew 0.5% quarter-on-quarter, much greater than the 0.3% analysts expected. That's 2.3% growth year-on-year.