The Wall Street Skinny

Kristen and Jen
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Where Bloomberg meets Page Six.  Join us -- Kristen and Jen -- two former Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers investment bankers who take the most complex deals, market moves, and stories in finance and distill them into what actually matters.  From conversations with the biggest names in investing to deep dives people can’t stop sharing (not to mention the occasional HBO Industry red carpet), this is the show Wall Street is obsessed with.

  1. 1 day ago

    SpaceX Just Rewrote the Rules of the Stock Market (And Most People Had No Idea)

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we dig into one of the biggest market questions hiding behind the hype around mega IPOs: what happens to passive index investors when companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI go public?  We ask why the VIX and major indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq look calm, while single-name stocks like Tesla are showing much higher implied volatility, and why the spread between index volatility and individual stock volatility has reached extreme levels. Along the way, we break down the dispersion trade, implied versus realized volatility, and whether upcoming IPOs could force investors to rotate out of existing AI, tech, and “Elon trade” names to fund new allocations. We also explore how changing index rules could reshape the market structure itself. Should a massive company like SpaceX be included quickly in the Nasdaq or S&P 500? How do float requirements, seasoning periods, profitability screens, and liquidity constraints affect ETF investors and passive funds that have to buy the underlying shares? We debate whether excluding these mega-cap IPOs would distort benchmarks, whether including them could create liquidity pressure, and how SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI could change the relationship between passive investing, active stock picking, and index volatility. Finally, we ask whether today’s market setup is starting to echo the dot-com bubble, with bullish sentiment, a low put/call ratio, AI enthusiasm, and a wave of high-profile IPOs creating both opportunity and risk. Are investors buying call options like lottery tickets? Could the arrival of new public AI and space stocks drain capital from the Mag Seven, Tesla, software, and private markets? And as AI infrastructure companies become publicly investable, we question whether the real winners will be the foundational LLM providers, the tech giants, or the next generation of startups built on top of them. Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    31 min

  2. 4 days ago

    Ex-Morgan Stanley Bankers: "Strangers" by Belle Burden Part 2 | How Much Her Husband Was Actually Earning

    Send us Fan Mail No one is talking about the insane thing that's happened to Big Law partner compensation over the past decade — and how it stacks up against Wall Street. In this deep dive we broke down EXACTLY what's going on. What started as an attempt to quantify how much Belle Burden's husband — from the cultural phenomenon Strangers — was actually earning during their marriage, after he left Davis Polk and landed at an equity long/short hedge fund, turned into a full-blown investigation: how Big Law and hedge funds really make money, what the compensation structures look like, and who actually comes out ahead. We were positive we knew the answer. We were wrong. Here's what we're not going to spoil — but here's what's on the table: One firm reportedly offered $80 million over three years to poach a single partner. That's not a typo. That's hedge fund money… for a lawyer.The top firms are clearing eight figures per partner — and we name them.The Financial Times has reported some hedge fund traders are being offered 9 figures comp packages but how does it vary roles by role, firm by firm and year by year,  We get into the lockstep model, the eat-what-you-kill brutality of the buy side, "two and twenty," and the math of who's really ahead at 25, at 35, at 45 — plus the quiet shift that flipped the entire game while almost nobody outside the industry was watching. 📩 The FULL breakdown, complete with financial model if you want to see play with key assumptions lives on our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny  🎧 Our original breakdown of Strangers: https://youtu.be/3fbWStK44P0?si=N5Qif1UhVxz06i7l 🏛️ For the deal nerds — our Caesars Palace coup series: https://youtu.be/VKROBLck-RA?si=oF8tiwyuwvthXM26 Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    42 min

  3. 27 May

    Ex-Morgan Stanley Bankers: "Strangers" by Belle Burden Part 1 | Our Initial HOT TAKES

    Send us Fan Mail Two weeks ago, one of the most powerful women on Wall Street asked us to weigh in on Belle Burden's bombshell memoir: "Strangers". As two women who've lived and worked in every world this book touches — from raising three kids in New York City to working on Wall Street to growing up in Massachusetts and spending summers on Martha's Vineyard — we're uniquely positioned to read between the lines of a story that's been everywhere from Oprah to every video in your feed. In this episode, we break down the full financial picture most coverage glosses over: the prenup that may have been the original sin of the marriage, the real numbers behind a Davis Polk associate's salary vs. a fund-of-funds partner's take, how much Belle's husband likely earned at Arden and Select Equity, the math on a $4M Tribeca apartment and a $5.4M Martha's Vineyard estate, and why "running up quicksand" is the only way to describe trying to build wealth on a W-2 in Manhattan if you don't have a wife who's heiress to a Vanderbilt fortune.  We also dig into the power dynamics — the resentment baked into the prenup negotiation, the "make me a sandwich" moment, the affair with a sell-side banker, and why the cheating partner in these stories is almost never really about the other person. But here's where their take diverges sharply from Belle's own messaging: the real lesson isn't "know your finances" — it's something much harder.  We argue that no amount of financial literacy would have changed Belle's story. Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    52 min

  4. 26 May

    Hedge Funds Want the Equity in Your Home, feat. Tacora Capital Founder Keri Findley

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode we dig into the state of the American consumer's balance sheet, which on paper isn't broke but is increasingly "boxed in." We walk through eye-opening Federal Reserve data: total household debt hit an all-time high of $18.8 trillion in Q1 2026 (up $4.6 trillion since pre-COVID), credit card balances peaked at $1.25 trillion with rates north of 20%, and while headline wages are up roughly 32% since 2020, real inflation-adjusted earnings have grown just 2-3% against housing, insurance, and grocery costs that have surged 60-80%. The result is a deepening K-shaped economy where homeowners are sitting on a record $17.8 trillion in equity, including roughly $11.6 trillion that's "tappable," but can't realistically refinance out of their 2-3% pandemic-era mortgages. That sets up a fascinating conversation with Kerry Finley, founder of Tacora Capital, about Home Equity Investment options (HEIs), a product profiled in a recent Bloomberg piece. Unlike a HELOC, an HEI isn't debt: an originator like Point Digital buys a percentage of the equity in your home for cash today (with a volatility haircut), takes no monthly payments, and settles up when you sell or refinance. Kerry breaks down a clean example using a million-dollar home with a $600K mortgage, explains why this product fits borrowers who can't clear the 750+ FICO bar for a HELOC (including 1099 and K-1 earners), and why the average returns on these instruments have been around 17% since 2015. We also explore why this isn't a 2008 redux, where HEIs fit in residential real estate's hyper-local landscape, and how the product might actually serve as a credit-curing tool for consumers carrying expensive card debt.  Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    41 min

  5. 14 May

    $53 Billion Hedge Fund Chief Strategist: The Next Market Shock Is Hiding in Plain Sight

    Send us Fan Mail We sat down with Elizabeth Burton, the new Chief Strategist at Fortress, one of the world’s biggest and most respected hedge funds, to ask what actually matters most in this market — and her answer might surprise you. This is the same Elizabeth Burton who, back in 2020, made the call that inflation would be sticky, not transitory — while much of the market, and even the Fed, was still arguing the opposite. Now she’s back with another uncomfortable view: the market may be focusing on the wrong risks again. In this episode, we ask why the bond market matters so much, whether investors are too eager to believe we’re going back to a 2018-style world of low rates and easy returns, whether the panic over private credit is missing a bigger problem in private equity, and what happens if AI disruption doesn’t stop at software. We also get into the next sector that could be blindsided by AI, why the allocator world may become increasingly K-shaped, how the biggest institutions could fall behind if they can’t move fast enough, and what market risks keep investors up at night even more than private credit. Plus, Elizabeth tells us how she almost became a New York City beat cop, why Fortress is not the private equity shop some people think it is, and how she almost got denied insurance coverage after being accused of climbing Mount Everest. You do not want to miss this episode!! Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    55 min

  6. 8 May

    Burry Left in a Hurry! The Loophole GameStop Could Use to Pull Off Buying eBay (10x its Size)

    Send us Fan Mail Michael Burry just dumped all his GameStop shares. eBay reportedly deactivated Ryan Cohen's account. And the $56 billion "takeover" GameStop pitched on CNBC? It would actually have eBay shareholders paying for most of it themselves. We're back to break down the latest twists in the GameStop–eBay drama — and why this deal is structured unlike almost any takeover Wall Street has seen. In this episode, Kristen walks Jen (and you) through the rollover equity mechanics that make this look less like an LBO and more like a SPAC, the precedent Bill Ackman set when he paid $10 million to get the SEC to approve his SPARC, and why levering eBay up at 7–10x puts the combined company at material bankruptcy risk over the next few years. We also get into why eBay might actually want a version of this deal (just not this version), and whether a  private equity firm could step in with a cleaner bid,  Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    25 min

  7. 5 May

    GameStop Just Bid $56 Billion for eBay. What is ACTUALLY Going On????

    Send us Fan Mail 🚨 EMERGENCY EPISODE: GameStop just made an unsolicited $56 billion bid for eBay, and the math is NOT mathing. After watching CEO Ryan Cohen's bizarre live CNBC interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin (where he kept deflecting questions with answers like "it's on the website"), we hit *record* immediately to break this down. Kristen, our resident investment banking, PE, and M&A expert, walks through why this deal defies the laws of physics: The offer: $125/share, half cash, half stock — roughly $56bn total GameStop's market cap: under $11bn Cash needed: $28bn (GameStop has $9bn on hand + a "up to $20bn" TD Bank commitment letter) Combined company leverage: ~10x EBITDA (a massive LBO is typically 7x — banks don't do 10x) The $17bn equity hole: where is it actually coming from? We compare this to the Paramount/Warner Bros deal (spoiler: that one works because Larry Ellison is bankrolling it), unpack GameStop's curious 5% derivative stake in eBay, and explore the theories floating around — CEO comp package triggers, a possible "uno reverse" play to get eBay to bid for GameStop instead, and echoes of the Porsche/Volkswagen hostile takeover. Plus: Ryan Cohen's background, the dismissed Bed Bath & Beyond pump-and-dump lawsuit, and why no sovereign wealth fund has a strategic reason to write the check. Got a theory on what's really going on? Drop it in the comments. Want to learn how to actually run accretion/dilution analyses and tear deals apart like this? Check out our 35+ hour self-paced Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals course, taught by Kristen. https://thewallstreetskinny.com/premium-self-study/ Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    18 min

  8. 30 Apr

    Every New Fed Chair Has Crashed the Market. A New One is Coming May 15th

    Send us Fan Mail Jerome Powell's term as Fed Chair ends May 15th, and his likely successor Kevin Warsh is poised to walk into the most fractured Fed since 1992. In this episode, we're breaking down what actually happened at Powell's final meeting, who the dissenters were and why, and what it tells us about the Fed Warsh is about to inherit. But the bigger question we're wrestling with is this: what does Kevin Warsh actually want to do? He's been remarkably vocal for 20 years about his views on monetary policy, and his philosophy represents a real regime change — a more unified Fed, less hand-holding of markets, a smaller balance sheet, and a return to the Fed staying in its lane. We walk through who actually sits on the FOMC and how voting works, what quantitative easing really is and why we started doing it in the first place, the difference between monetary and fiscal policy (and why people keep confusing the two), and why "lower rates" doesn't mean the same thing to all people — including why a Warsh Fed could theoretically deliver a cut to the Fed funds rate alongside higher mortgage rates. We also get into the so-called "Chairman's Curse" — the eerie pattern of catastrophe that has marked nearly every Fed chair transition in modern history — and what event-day risk around FOMC meetings might look like under a chair who wants to communicate less, not more. Plus: Powell's surprising decision to stay on as a governor and the uncomfortable question nobody wants to ask out loud — if we're never going to take our medicine on the deficit, what is the role of the Federal Reserve actually supposed to be? Shop our Self Paced Courses: Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HERE Fixed Income Sales & Trading HERE Subscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
    49 min
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About

Where Bloomberg meets Page Six.  Join us -- Kristen and Jen -- two former Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers investment bankers who take the most complex deals, market moves, and stories in finance and distill them into what actually matters.  From conversations with the biggest names in investing to deep dives people can’t stop sharing (not to mention the occasional HBO Industry red carpet), this is the show Wall Street is obsessed with.

Information

  • Creator
    Kristen and Jen
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    247
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Wall Street Skinny
  • Show Website
    The Wall Street Skinny

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