What you need to know on Wall Street right now

Welcome to Finance Insider, Business Insider's summary of the top stories of the past 24 hours.

Steve Cohen is changing what it means to be a star employee.

His family office, Point72 Asset Management, is rolling out a new way of measuring performance that will identify core, necessary skills and rank them on a 6-point scale.

"If there are 80 skills that might define your career from beginning to end for a particular role, there might be 15 or 20 that are relevant at your particular stage of development," Mike Butler, Point72's head of human capital management, told Business Insider. "The whole thing is there; you're zeroing in on the skills that are pertinent."

In related news, JPMorgan has promoted the next generation of trading talent in its equities business, and another top trading executive has left Credit Suisse in New York.

In hedge fund news, Third Point, the hedge fund led by Dan Loeb, told investors that this is "the most disappointing and bizarre election in our country's history." It also said that stockpicking is back, but with a twist.

And Bill Ackman is moving his hedge fund to the far west side of Manhattan.

In deal news, Broadcom is buying Brocade Communications for $5.9 billion, and Valeant may sell Salix, a division regarded as a family jewel for the troubled pharmaceutical company , to survive. Here's what Wall Street thinks about the potential Valeant deal.

In markets news, crude oil is getting clobbered after a massive inventory build. Frozen orange juice just hit an all-time high. And the Mexican peso is getting slammed again.

Office Depot is soaring after beating on earnings, and Alibaba is popping after a "clean beat from top to bottom."

In tech news, Microsoft has officially launched Microsoft Teams, a new work chat app for its Office 365 suite across PCs, smartphones, and tablets, that will compete directly with Slack. Slack took out a full-page ad in The New York Times so it could write an open letter to its new competitor.

In the media business, The Wall Street Journal is chopping down sections and eliminating positions.

Lastly, take a look inside the Brooklyn loft of a Wall Streeter turned fragrance entrepreneur.

Here are the top Wall Street headlines at midday

A hedge fund wrote a letter to investors explaining why they should read a classic book about cognitive biases - Texas-based hedge fund Voss Capital didn't pontificate on Fed rate hikes or the future of global markets in its quarterly letter to investors.

Hundreds of prominent economists just denounced Donald Trump in an open letter to voters - Nearly 400 economists have signed an open letter to voters denouncing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and telling voters to "choose a different candidate."

Elon Musk may single-handedly revive a business practice that's gone out of style - Tesla and SolarCity are pitching their combined value - "synergies," if you must - ahead of a vote by shareholders in a few weeks.

Here's the strategy that has 'worked really well' for Goldman's quant investing group - Wall Street is growing more dependent on complex models and data science to make trading decisions.

Americans haven't burned this much gasoline since 2007 - US drivers consumed a record 9.6 million barrels of gasoline per day in July of 2007.

How Wall Street titans Jamie Dimon, Warren Buffett, and Carl Icahn avoid using email - In an age when most bankers use keyboards to communicate with each other, a small group of the Wall Street elite refuses to say anything substantive in an email, text or chat, and some will not communicate digitally at all.

DEUTSCHE BANK: Here are the 5 'dark sides' to the ECB's asset buying - The negative effects of the European Central Bank's last-ditch efforts to save the eurozone from crisis in 2012 are becoming "overwhelming," according to Deutsche Bank's chief German economist.

Here's what happened to stocks when the Cubs and the Indians last won the World Series - With a 9-3 victory on Tuesday night, the Chicago Cubs forced a World Series Game 7 on Wednesday night and are on the precipice of their first World Series victory since before the modern zipper was invented.

The best steakhouses in America, according to OpenTable - Restaurants may be more innovative than ever these days, but still, nothing beats a classic steakhouse meal.