The Wall Street Skinny

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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. 
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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!!
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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, 
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🚨 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/
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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?
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