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The Wall Street Skinny

The Wall Street Skinny

Kristen and Jen 245 Episodes Aug 19, 2026

Join Kristen and Jen, two former Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers investment bankers, as they break down complex financial deals, market moves, and stories into what actually matters. Featuring conversations with top investors and deep dives that people can't stop sharing, this is the show Wall Street is obsessed with.

Episodes

Is a Private Credit scandal brewing behind the LA Lakers Sale?
Is a Private Credit scandal brewing behind the LA Lakers Sale? Aug 19, 2026 2214 The LA Lakers --- a prestigious basketball franchise that didn't change hands for 46 years --- just sold twice in ten months, the second time for $2.5 billion more than the first. The seller is Mark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim, owner of the Dodgers and part of Chelsea FC, and the man whose laptop and phone the FBI seized off his private jet just as the Lakers deal was coming together. Since then, on
OpenAI's Lawyer: How Big Tech is Winning the AI Race in the Courts
OpenAI's Lawyer: How Big Tech is Winning the AI Race in the Courts Aug 12, 2026 3070 We got to sit down with John Quinn — the "Quinn" of Quinn Emanuel — one of the most powerful litigators in the world, and the man whose firm is defending OpenAI right now. What does someone at the very top of the legal food chain see coming that the rest of us don't? And why does he think one of the oldest concepts in law is about to become the most valuable weapon in tech? Here's what pulled us
SpaceX: Revisiting the IPO and What Comes Next
SpaceX: Revisiting the IPO and What Comes Next Aug 5, 2026 1754 After the largest IPO in history, only about 5% of SpaceX — roughly $83 billion of the $1.75 trillion — is actually free to trade. Insiders are locked up, the banks that underwrote the deal can't lend shares to short sellers, and index funds are being forced to buy as SpaceX joins the Nasdaq-100 and the Russel. In this episode, Jen and Kristen, both former Morgan Stanley investment bankers, break
The Biggest Hedge Fund Blow-Up of 2026 EXPLAINED: Situational Awareness
The Biggest Hedge Fund Blow-Up of 2026 EXPLAINED: Situational Awareness Jul 31, 2026 1796 What took Situational Awareness from a $45bn hedge fund down to a $10bn hedge fund in less than a month? Two years ago Leopold Aschenbrenner was a researcher at OpenAI who wrote a 165-page essay about superintelligence. Since then, he raised $225 million seed funding from Stripe co-founders, Jane Street, and GitHub's CEO, which he proceeded to turn into an AI hedge fund called Situational Awarenes
What Just Happened to AI Stocks??
What Just Happened to AI Stocks?? Jul 30, 2026 3601 *Note: This episode was recorded before news broke of Situational Awareness' unwind, which gives us much better insight into the pace and magnitude of the move in the Korean markets specifically.* Chips, China, and credit. The three forces tearing through the AI trade right now, and we called it last week. In this episode we break down why the bond market cracked first, what widening credit sprea
Why Jamie Dimon Won't Buy Stocks OR Bonds Right Now
Why Jamie Dimon Won't Buy Stocks OR Bonds Right Now Jul 24, 2026 989 Short interest in the S&P 500 is sitting near its highest level since 2010, Jamie Dimon says he won't touch US stocks or Treasuries at these prices, and SpaceX is the ninth-most-shorted stock in the market ahead of its very first earnings report. So this week we're asking: why is everyone so bearish when the market is up more than 15% from the March lows? What did Alphabet's first-ever negative fr
Ex-Morgan Stanley Bankers' "Yesteryear" HOT TAKES: Trad Wives vs. Career Women
Ex-Morgan Stanley Bankers' "Yesteryear" HOT TAKES: Trad Wives vs. Career Women Jul 18, 2026 4465 We're talking about the buzziest --- and most controversial --- book of the summer: "Yesteryear" by Caro Claire Burke. It poses a question no one's brave enough to answer: are trad wives and career women fundamentally at odds? Or are they two sides of the same coin, minted by a bigger system that profits from their fight? As two Wall Street veterans recently profiled in Bloomberg for our new ca
How AI is Repeating the Exact Mistake that Bankrupted Enron | 50-Year Power Insider
How AI is Repeating the Exact Mistake that Bankrupted Enron | 50-Year Power Insider Jul 16, 2026 2848 With hyperscalers like Meta, Google, Amazon and SpaceXAI burning through cash, we decided to answer the question underneath all of it: what is this money actually buying? In this episode we start high level with a primer on the AI ecosystem or what Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang calls the "five-layer cake" of AI — energy, chips, infrastructure, models, applications. We get into the vocabulary everyone
Mindy Kaling's "Not Suitable for Work": Our Hot Takes on the Show About Investment Banking in NYC We've Been Waiting For
Mindy Kaling's "Not Suitable for Work": Our Hot Takes on the Show About Investment Banking in NYC We've Been Waiting For Jun 14, 2026 4360 Send us Fan Mail Mindy Kaling's new sitcom "Not Suitable for Work" just dropped, and we have thoughts. We are two Wall Street veterans breaking down everything the show gets right — and wrong — about what it actually looks like to show up as a first-year analyst at a bulge bracket investment bank, navigate office politics (and romance!), and try to build a life in New York City on a salary that so
How Google Front-Ran SpaceX with a Record Breaking $85 Billion Equity Raise
How Google Front-Ran SpaceX with a Record Breaking $85 Billion Equity Raise Jun 11, 2026 1410 Send us Fan Mail While everyone's been fixated on the SpaceX IPO, Google quietly pulled off the largest equity offering in history—roughly $85 billion—and basically front-ran the entire market to do it. In this episode of The Skinny on Wall Street, Kristen and Jen break down why a cash-printing machine like Alphabet would raise money at all, and why they did it in the most fascinating way possible
Spotify Executive: How to Become a $100B Company When Everyone Expects Your Product Free
Spotify Executive: How to Become a $100B Company When Everyone Expects Your Product Free Jun 10, 2026 2483 Send us Fan Mail We've done the finance of Industry, the finance of Succession, the finance of Belle Burden's Strangers — but we've never done the finance of CREATORS. So when Spotify invited us to their Investor Day, we knew we had to sit down and ask the question every aspiring musician, podcaster, and Instagram creator is obsessing over: in a world where everyone wants to be a creator, how does
SpaceX Just Rewrote the Rules of the Stock Market (And Most People Had No Idea)
SpaceX Just Rewrote the Rules of the Stock Market (And Most People Had No Idea) Jun 6, 2026 1883 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

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