WTF happened in Japan’s bond market???
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny I barely have a social life. But fittingly, the one day that I hop on a flight for a girls’ trip to the Caribbean with my college roommate, the market melts down. You should have seen me desperately trying to connect to […]
Netflix revised their $27.75 / share offer for Warner Bros. to ALL CASH. Why Netflix’s stock price tanked…
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny While Jen was off living her best island life, there was a big development in the Netflix–Warner Bros. Discovery saga. LAST WEEK, Netflix announced that they were planning to revise their bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, shifting from a mix of cash […]
Why “Affordability” Measures…Might Make You Poorer
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny In a political environment where “affordability” has become the rallying cry for both parties, radical new policy changes are being proposed at both the local and federal level. The latest? President Trump’s call to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for […]
Rumor: Netflix may revise its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery to an all-cash deal
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny If you’re wondering why Netflix would change anything after seemingly “winning” the bidding war against Paramount Skydance (PSKY) and Comcast, you’re not alone. At first glance, it looks like Netflix already secured the deal. The Warner Bros. Discovery board accepted their offer, […]
Saying “So Long!” to the Long End?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Global bond markets are repricing in response to structural changes that you may not understand…or, in some cases, ever even heard about. But I cannot stress enough how important it is for EVERYONE to understand what’s going on in the bond market. […]
Strategic vs. Financial Buyers: What the WBD / Paramount Drama Really Tells Us
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny If you’ve been following the news, you probably saw two headlines back-to-back. First: “Warner Bros. Discovery Rejects Paramount Bid.” That part wasn’t surprising. The reported $30-per-share offer was the same price WBD’s board had already rejected privately. Paramount simply tried to take […]
M&A Masterclass: When LBO meets Hostile Takeover
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Paramount vying with Netflix to buy Warner Brothers Discovery is all anyone can talk about. But there’s SO much the financial press is getting wrong — or missing altogether. We are breaking down EVERYTHING you need to know to be smart about the […]
Will our favorite HBO Max show Industry…be on Netflix soon!?!
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire WBD’s content and streaming/studio business, specifically: HBO, HBO Max, Warner Bros. film & TV studios, and their extensive film and TV library. The deal is priced at […]
Is the AI Boom a Bubble? Michael Burry Weighs In
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Burry was one of the first major investors to short subprime in size leading up to the 2008 crisis. His story ran alongside Steve Eisman’s in The Big Short (check out our interview with Eisman from earlier this year!). Now Burry is loudly […]
Special Report: Is Private Credit Past its Peak?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Much ado is being made in the headlines about Private Credit these days. Are we at or past peak for an asset class that has become the darling of investors over the past few years? Or do greater things lie ahead? Perhaps it […]
Meta and xAI: Project Finance and Lease Accounting 101
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny $6.5 BILLION DOLLARS. That is roughly how much MORE Meta is paying to raise debt in the private credit market for their new AI data center vs. what they could have paid financing the data center in the traditional corporate credit market. So […]
No Foregone Conclusions: Is Jerome Powell Playing Hard to Get?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny It should have been a nothingburger of a Fed meeting. At the September FOMC meeting after cutting rates by 25bps, Powell described the Fed’s approach as one of “risk management”, suggesting that its next steps would be extremely data dependent. But with the […]
Apollo vs. First Brands: FAFO in the Credit World
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny One of our followers reached out this week with a great question. They’d seen a story in the FT about Apollo buying credit default swaps on First Brands, the company that has become a huge story in the private credit world due to […]
Is the Credit Market Finally Cracking?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Two high-profile bankruptcies in the auto sector, Tricolor Auto Group and First Brands, have dominated headlines in recent weeks. These developments feel timely to us, as we’re currently reading The Credit Investor’s Handbook ahead of our conversation with author Michael Gatto on Restructuring […]
Gold is Trading at All Time Highs. Why Do People Invest in Gold in the First Place…and Why Now?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny You may have seen headlines recently that gold has hit an all-time high. Feels like a great time to talk about what it means to invest in gold, why investors oftentimes allocate some portion of their portfolios to it, and what’s happening right […]
Should We Ditch the Fed Funds Rate?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Here’s why I don’t think this is a crazy idea… Dallas Fed Chair Lorie Logan made headlines last week suggesting that we should abandon the Federal Funds rate as the primary mechanism for monetary policy transmission. She’s not the first to suggest this […]
The EA Sports LBO: Why it feels familiar, yet totally different.
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Kristen here, I walked onto the Morgan Stanley trading floor in 2007, the year KKR, TPG, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners led what was then the largest leveraged buyout in history: TXU, the Texas utility later renamed Energy Future Holdings. The deal had […]
H-1B Visa Reform: 2009 All Over Again?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Kristen here. When I joined Morgan Stanley in 2007, at the height of the then-credit boom, getting an H-1B visa was no small feat. What is an H1-B visa? The H-1B visa program allows foreign workers who are highly skilled in areas like […]
Trump Wants to Kill Quarterly Earnings: Good Idea or Just a Distraction?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny President Trump recently floated the idea that (subject to SEC approval) public companies should no longer be required to report earnings four times a year. His proposal? Only twice a year. Many of you asked for our take. So, is this a smart […]
Sports Investing Deep Dive
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny The Business of Sports: Three Leagues, Three Models With the NFL season kicking off last week, and in honor of two recent episodes (our interview with A-Rod and our Moneyball analysis), this seemed to be a great week to finally cover Sports Teams […]
Taylor Swift and Investing Collide
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Is Taylor Swift’s purchase of her original masters an emotional move? Or a brilliant investment? Last week Taylor Swift announced to the world that she had finally repurchased her masters for a reported $360 million, according to Billboard. We don’t have many details. Billboard said she paid […]
Jerome Powell Surprised Us at Jackson Hole
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Going into Jackson Hole, it felt like the market was primed for disappointment. But Powell delivered. What happened? We started the day with an exuberant market priced to perfection. Expectations that the Fed will cut interest rates at their September meeting seem fully […]
SPACs Are Back…But Should They Be?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, aka SPACs, are making a comeback. After the mania of 2020–2021 fizzled out, we assumed the product had been consigned to the dustpile of Wall Street history. But Chamath Palihapitiya, once hailed as the “SPAC King,” has filed for […]
Hot Take on the Bond Market: IT’S A TRAP!
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Is the real risk in U.S. Treasuries…T Bills??? The financial press has been sounding the alarm for weeks. From Bloomberg to CNBC, heavyweights like Jamie Dimon and other trusted voices have been pointing to long-dated U.S. Treasuries as a risky investment. Why? Lack of fiscal discipline, inflation […]
Trade Court Blocks Trump’s Tariffs: Market Reaction and Lingering Questions
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Yesterday, the U.S. Court of International Trade shocked the markets by attempting to curtail some of the more extreme aspects of President Trump’s tariff plan. The court ruled that the reciprocal tariffs announced on “Liberation Day”, which were imposed under a previously little-known 1977 U.S. […]
Bad Press = Bad Bonuses?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny A member of our social media community recently asked us about banks that have had some seriously bad headlines. “Do these impact the firm’s deal flow? And, if so, how badly?” Some have speculated that negative press will spark cries of outrage, scare […]
Trump’s Tax Bill: What’s In It, How It Could Pass, and Why It Matters for Markets
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Last week on The Wall Street Skinny, we sat down with Congressman Seth Magaziner to dissect the tax proposal that just passed the house by one vote, and the structural debt risks that aren’t getting enough airtime. Here’s a breakdown of what you need to […]
Top 10 Tips for Turning Your Summer Internship into a Full-Time Offer
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Jen here! For those of you who know me, many will recall that I didn’t get the return offer from my junior year summer internship. Yet only five years later, I found myself in charge of the all the summer interns rotating through the desks on the trading floor at the exact same firm I’d once […]
Why the Market’s Rebound Doesn’t Mean Tariff Pain Is Over
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Markets have been on a rollercoaster following the tariff announcements (Jen has aged in dog years). Yet major equity indices have rebounded to levels from before tariffs were first introduced. That might seem reassuring…but it shouldn’t be. The truth is, the real economic impact of the tariffs hasn’t hit yet. And the reason is […]
Zuckerburg Considered an Instagram Spin Off…What the Heck is a Spin Off?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny There’s been renewed buzz about Big Tech breakups after a courtroom reveal: Mark Zuckerberg considered spinning off Instagram in 2018 over fears of antitrust scrutiny. The news surfaced during a high-profile trial in Washington that’s widely seen as the first real test of […]
Why is Yale’s Endowment Liquidating Its Private Equity Portfolio?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny When you learn about institutional investors, you’re bound to come across the “David Swensen” or “Yale Endowment” model. David Swensen, the former CIO of Yale’s Endowment, pioneered the asset-class based allocation theory that many capital allocators still use today. And now, we’re seeing […]
Who Is Winning the Trade War: US or China?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Amidst the rollercoaster of the US’ tariff standoff with China, the Chinese RMB fell to an 18-year low. Some pundits pointed to this as a signal that the US was prevailing in weakening China through its tariff policies, which have yet to be finalized. […]
Basis Trade Blow-up: The REAL Culprit behind the Bond Market Chaos?
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny There’s been considerable speculation that last week’s bond market chaos wasn’t caused by a loss of confidence in U.S. assets due to tariff policy announcements. Rather, some argue, massively levered hedge funds unwinding something called “the basis trade” was perhaps to blame. Bloomberg […]
Why Private Equity Panicked: The 4 Ripple Effects of Tariff Talk
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny At first glance, you might think private equity firms wouldn’t be too fazed by Trump’s proposed tariffs. After all, PE is a long-term, illiquid asset class. Investors can’t check their performance minute-to-minute like they can with public stocks. But you’d be wrong. The […]
What Made Trump Blink? The Treasury Market’s Quiet Power Move
By Kristen Kelly & Jen Saarbach, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny We think the Treasury market was the ultimate impetus behind the 90 day pause in reciprocal tariffs. Why? Let’s get back to macro theory. If there’s a “normal” negative shock to the U.S. economy say, a spike in oil prices and it really […]
Elon’s $33 Billion xAI–X Deal: Valuation Tricks, Ownership Dilution, and Why It Matters
By Kristen Kelly & Jen Saarbach, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Elon Musk just bought Twitter…again. But this time, he bought it from himself — sort of. His artificial intelligence startup, xAI, acquired X (formerly Twitter) for a headline valuation of $33 billion in an all-stock deal. So, if he paid $44 billion for […]
The Skinny on Tariffs & Market Shock: What’s Behind the New Trade War
By Jen Saarbach & Kristen Kelly, Co-Founders of The Wall Street Skinny Never a dull moment… Markets are imploding after Trump announced a new set of “reciprocal” tariffs on the U.S.’s trading partners in addition to the tariffs already levied against Canada and Mexico. Equities are down as much as 10% in their worst week […]
What Private Equity Analysts Building LBOs Models Must Know About How D&A Impacts Interest Deductibility
By Kristen Kelly, Co-Founder of The Wall Street Skinny Let me walk you through one of the juiciest (and most misunderstood) finance policy fights happening right now: private equity firms are pushing for a simple tax rule change that hinges on just two little letters D&A. If you’re thinking, “That sounds dry,” stick with me. […]
Google’s $32 Billion Acquisition of Wiz: Why Investors Are Skeptical
By Kristen Kelly, Co-Founder of The Wall Street Skinny Last week, Google announced its largest acquisition ever: a $32 billion all-cash deal to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz. You’d think such a massive investment in a high-growth sector like cloud security would get investors excited, right? But instead, Google’s stock dropped nearly 2.5% on the news. […]