What's The Big Deal?

Wall Street Prep
  • 4.6 (11)
  • Investing
  • Updated weekly

Get the view from the inside. Every week, Graham Smith (ex-Ares) and Deborah Taylor (ex-Barclays) take a look at Wall Street’s headline-grabbing deals.  From mega-mergers and hostile takeovers to complex private credit transactions, they break down the why, the how, and the who behind the numbers.

  1. 3 days ago ·  Video

    Did Claude Just Replace the Equity Research Analyst?

    This week Debs gives Claude a job she did for years at Barclays: write an equity research note on a company of its choosing.  It picked Chipotle. Its first pass came back neutral with an equal weight rating, so Debs pushed it to take a view. The result is a sell rating, a $28.50 target price on a $33.68 share price and a note titled Guac is Extra. Debs walks through the note the way a research desk would. The front page is the only part most clients read, so the rating, target price, downside and thesis all have to land in seconds.  Claude's thesis is that Chipotle's recovery in traffic and revenue is already in the share price while its margins remain well below 2024 levels, with all three of its valuation scenarios coming in under the current price. Graham reads it as an outsider and finds the holes a client would. The sell rating sits on earnings forecasts above consensus, which is the opposite of what a bearish call usually looks like.  One of the thesis bullets is written in analyst-sounding language neither host can decode. And Chipotle's enterprise value comes in below its market cap, a net cash position that raises questions the note never answers. Along the way the pair cover what analysts can access that Claude can't, why liking a company has nothing to do with a rating, catalysts and risks to the thesis, Debs's own buy call on a company that went bust within six months and whether AI shrinks the sell side or makes it better. The sell rating in this episode was generated by Claude at the host's prompting as a demonstration of the research workflow. It is not a recommendation. Topics covered: → Claude writing an equity research note on a company it chose itself → What sell-side analysts see that public sources don't → Sell side vs buy side research → Why the front page of a research note matters most → Target price, downside and conviction → A sell rating on forecasts above consensus → Catalysts and risks to the thesis → How AI is changing coverage and whether equity research survives it Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools. Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  2. 17 Sept ·  Video

    Can Anthropic's Claude Build Its Own $2 Trillion IPO Roadshow Deck?

    This week Graham and Debs take on Anthropic's IPO, the offering investors are projecting at around $2 trillion on a reported $100bn raise, with pricing expected before the US midterms.  No S-1 yet, so no official financials, but the roadshow is coming, and the pair asked two frontier models to draft the roadshow presentation from public information alone: Claude Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra, same prompt. The result surprised both of them. Graham's verdict, before either deck is on screen, is that ChatGPT may have done a better job of selling Claude than Claude did.  Fable's version is careful, correct and, in Debs's word, uninspiring: a blank offering summary, a why-we-win page that reads like a list, and a TAM slide with a number so specific it raises more questions than it answers.  Astra's version is prettier, better written and pulls out the metrics an investor would actually ask about, from the valuation history from the last private round. Neither deck is something a banker could walk into a meeting with. Around the decks, the episode is a working guide to what a roadshow is for. Debs, who sat through hundreds of these, explains why the deck matters when investors already have the S-1: it's the prompt for the conversation with management, and the meeting is where investors decide whether they trust the people with their capital.  Graham digs into the number everyone will fight over, the revenue run-rate, and the range of ways it can be calculated, from last month times twelve to last week times fifty-two.  They also cover revenue quality and switching costs, the extinction-risk headlines and what they might mean for the IPO's timing, regulation, Nvidia's reported role as an anchor investor and what a 31x revenue multiple looks like next to SpaceX's 100x. Topics covered: → Where Anthropic's IPO process stands and what's reported so far → What a roadshow deck is for when investors already have the S-1 → Fable 5.1 vs GPT-6 Astra drafting the same roadshow presentation → Revenue run-rates, and how much judgment goes into one → Revenue quality, enterprise mix and switching costs → TAM slides and the trouble with very specific trillions → AI risk, regulation and the timing of the listing → Nvidia as a reported anchor investor → 31x revenue vs SpaceX's 100x → Which model built the better deck, and why neither is ready Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools. Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  3. 10 Sept ·  Video

    Did AI Just Replace the Private Credit Analyst? (GPT-6 vs Fable 5.1)

    OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra is days old, so Graham and Debs put it straight to work against Claude Fable 5.1 on a real job: write a private credit memo for the same hospital deal Claude analyzed from the equity side last week. Same document, same prompt, live on screen, with Astra still generating when the recording started. The two models read the deal completely differently. Astra proposed $155M of sponsor equity to fund future cash burn and a tiny $4M revolver, a credit memo in form with no actual credit in it.  Fable went the other way: a $30M term loan, an undrawn ABL revolver and a delayed draw term loan, a classic private credit structure for a business where CapEx is outpacing EBITDA.  One of them is arguably overlevering the deal and the other is arguably underlevering it, and neither explained the one thing that might justify a loan here at all, the hard asset value of the hospital real estate. That gap becomes the lesson. Graham walks through how a credit investor actually thinks: your upside is capped at a contractual return, so the whole discipline is downside protection, and at a 1.3x gross underwrite it only takes a few losses to wreck a fund.  The pair dig into the EBITDA bridge ($4.5M actual to $9M normalized, with the usual sell-side aggressiveness in between), why cash flow and not EBITDA is what a lender lives on, how structure prices perceived risk, and why even a lender's memo should show the sponsor's equity returns, because deals only get done when they work for everyone. Both AI memos missed that too. Topics covered: → Fable 5.1 and GPT-6 Astra writing the same private credit memo, live → Two wildly different structures for one deal → Why neither model spotted the real estate lending angle → How credit investors think: capped upside, downside protection → The EBITDA bridge and why cash is what lenders care about → Structuring around risk: leverage, pricing and protections → Why credit memos still show equity returns → Which model you should trust (neither, yet) Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools. Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  4. 3 Sept ·  Video

    AI for Private Equity: Using Claude to Analyze Deals Like a Pro

    This week Graham and Debs give Claude Fable a first-year private equity associate's job: take a real deal document, digest it, pull out the risks and highlights, write the investment committee memo and build the indicative returns model.  The prompt was a few lines. The output is a seven-page IC memo, executive summary, entry valuation, investment thesis, operating cases, sources and uses, returns analysis, diligence items, with a working LBO model behind it, including the returns attribution analysis Claude added without being asked. The document itself is a rarity. CIMs stay confidential, Graham has read thousands and doesn't have a single one, but a Massachusetts rule forced this sale process into the open when a not-for-profit hospital was converted to for-profit in 2010. That makes it a genuine test: a real CIM, the way an associate would actually receive it. The hosts then push the model the way an investment committee would. The EBITDA bridge runs from $4.5M actual to $9M normalized, which is the quality of earnings question that decides whether you're paying 4.7x or 10.4x for the same business.  Base case returns come out at 2.3x and an 18% IRR. Debs challenges Claude to rerun the deal as a platform build, and the rerun jumps to 2.7x and a 27% IRR on $7M of synergies, with one misread the hosts catch immediately and a reprompting lesson attached.  Along the way: what a CIM actually is, how investment committee works stage by stage, and what happened when this deal traded in real life, an ending none of the models saw coming. Timestamps: 00:00 — Cold open 00:37 — This week: Claude does an associate's job 02:50 — What a CIM actually is 09:20 — Finding a deal document that's actually public 11:33 — A word from Wall Street Prep 12:04 — The seven-page memo and the simple prompt 14:20 — The EBITDA bridge: $4.5M or $9M? 16:36 — Entry valuation and the returns math 22:48 — Key risks and mitigants 26:07 — Challenging Claude: rerun it as a platform build 27:01 — Inside the LBO model 33:01 — Operating cases and debt mechanics 38:25 — Returns, and the attribution Claude added unprompted 41:45 — The platform rerun and the reprompt lesson 46:05 — What actually happened to this deal 50:24 — End Topics: → Giving Claude a real CIM and an associate's screening job → The prompt that produced a seven-page IC memo and LBO model → What a CIM is and why these documents stay private → How investment committee actually works, stage by stage → The EBITDA bridge and quality of earnings → Entry valuation, sources and uses and the returns math → Challenging Claude to rerun the deal as a platform build → The returns attribution Claude included unprompted → What actually happened to this deal Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools. Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  5. 27 Aug ·  Video

    Can Claude's AI Agents Build a Better M&A Model than Investment Bankers?

    This week Debs and Graham run the numbers on the proposed Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger, a deal that would create a $250bn rail network. Debs built a short form merger model for it, and how she built it is the real story. Fable burns through tokens fast, so Debs asked Claude to delegate the build: Sonnet for the data mining and consensus estimates, Fable for planning and structure, Opus to stress test the logic at the end, with Claude supplying the prompts for each handover. Switching models manually in the Excel add-in is clunky, but it worked and she never hit her token limit. Timestamps: 00:00 — Cold open 00:43 — Intro: the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern deal 01:48 — Why US rail is the way it is 04:03 — Delegating the build to Claude's agents 05:13 — A word from Wall Street Prep 05:45 — Which tasks go to Sonnet, which to Opus 06:58 — Why the Excel add-in makes this clunky 11:21 — Inside the merger model 12:51 — $2.75bn of synergies: material or punchy? 14:45 — Asset step ups and the tax treatment 16:22 — EPS accretion and pro forma leverage 19:33 — Reprompting live for standalone leverage 20:19 — Why the sensitivity tables are so hard to audit 22:23 — So is the deal any good? Topics covered: → Using Fable as an orchestrator and delegating to Sonnet and Opus → Which tasks are worth delegating, and what the handovers cost in tokens → Building a short form merger model in the Excel add-in → Consideration mix, synergies and whether $2.75bn is punchy → EPS accretion, pro forma leverage and why the two go together → Asset step ups, and why they don't help in a stock deal → Where the model falls short: standalone leverage, data tables → Whether the deal itself is actually interesting Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools. Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  6. 20 Aug ·  Video

    Investing With Claude AI: Screening the S&P 500 to Find Undervalued Stocks

    This week Debs and Graham build an investment screen with Claude and run it across the S&P 500. The prompt was two lines: produce a value and momentum screen, pull fundamentals from the SEC API and market data from a free source. Claude chose the factors, built the scoring and generated the dashboard. Debs, who is quick to point out she is not a coder, did the setup in Power Query. The screen ranks every company on earnings yield, book to price, EBITDA to EV, sales to EV and free cash flow yield, then blends those with one, three and six month price momentum into a composite score. Value on its own finds cheap stocks and some of those are cheap for a reason, so momentum is one way of filtering out the value trap. Debs is direct about where a screen still needs a human. The factor set punishes banks and insurers, which do not report a comparable EBITDA and score zero regardless of quality. Some multiple calculations need checking before you would rely on them. And the output is a shortlist to research, not a portfolio to buy. Timestamps: 00:00 — Intro 01:11 — What an investment screen is 02:28 — A word from Wall Street Prep 03:47 — Value and momentum styles 06:01 — The two line prompt 09:11 — "I am not a coder" 10:44 — The factors Claude chose 13:22 — Z scores and composite ranking 17:39 — The dashboard and your factor tilt 19:50 — Private markets vs public markets 24:38 — Retail investors and trading platforms 26:31 — What institutions still have that you don't Topics covered: → What an investment screen is and why investors use one → Building a value and momentum screen from a two line prompt → The factors Claude chose and why value alone is not enough → Z scores, composite ranking and adjusting factor weights → Where factor choices exclude viable companies → Why a screen is a starting point, not a buy list → Backtesting, alpha and systematic strategies → Retail investors connecting screens to trading platforms → What institutions still have: proprietary data and trading costs Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools.  Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.  Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  7. 13 Aug ·  Video

    How to Build INSANE Stock Research Dashboards with Claude

    Graham and Deborah build a full stock research dashboard from scratch using Claude, then use it to take apart a company's latest quarterly results in real time. The data comes straight from SEC EDGAR, the build runs off a single prompt and some back-and-forth, and the output is the kind of analysis that used to need an expensive terminal and a team behind it. The test case is SpaceX's first quarter as a public company, a business with enough contradictions to push an AI-built dashboard to its limits. Revenue beat expectations and the stock fell anyway, so Graham aims the dashboard at the why: cash burn against revenue, how little of the CapEx bill operations actually cover, and whether the $100bn revenue figure management keeps citing survives contact with what the quarter implies. Deborah works the analyst's angle. Where the numbers need manual checking before you trust them, where a run-rate multiple needs context, and the quality-of-earnings question under a headline adjusted EBITDA number leaning on stock-based comp add-backs. They also cover what a dashboard like this leaves out for a genuine investment decision, from share-price context to the market data a portfolio manager would want next to the fundamentals. The broader theme is access: the tooling that used to be the moat is getting cheap fast, and both hosts weigh what that means for anyone running their own research, retail investors included. Neither would trade on the output yet, but neither dismisses where it's heading. Key Discussion Points: Building a live earnings dashboard with Claude Code and free SEC EDGAR data.  How fast the cash is going: free cash flow against revenue and a $100bn balance.  Why operations covered only 12% of CapEx and where the rest came from.  The $100bn revenue claim against the $31.3bn the quarter implies.  CapEx at 6.4x depreciation as a growth-stage signal.  The stock-based comp add-back debate and the widening adjusted-EBITDA wedge.  What the dashboard is missing for a real investment call.  The democratization of financial data and what it means for retail investors. Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools.  Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital.  Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

  8. 6 Aug ·  Video

    Can Claude Build an Investment-Banking Grade 3-Statement Model in Excel?

    Graham asked Fable 5 for a five-year three-statement operating model on Lululemon.  A few short paragraphs of instruction: where to pull historic results from, where to source forecasts, what structure to use, which levers matter for a retailer with stores, inventory and an active restructuring plan. What came back was more than a set of forecasts. Claude split revenue by geography rather than product segment, having worked out that the Americas, China and rest of world story matters more for this business than menswear versus womenswear.  It chose INDEX over CHOOSE for scenario selection without being asked. It flagged share buybacks so the diluted share count wouldn't distort EPS. It broke out operating leases separately, which matters when a retailer can grow its store base through leases instead of CapEx. It also wasn't flawless. Debs caught a scenario gap in the depreciation logic and a judgment call on deferred revenue that a research analyst would handle with a dedicated schedule. Topics covered: → Why revenue got split by geography instead of product segment → INDEX vs CHOOSE and why unprompted formula choices matter → The readme tab: giving an agent persistent context so the file becomes a living document → Three genuine scenario cases rather than plus or minus 100 basis points → Where the D&A logic breaks when you flex the CapEx case → The deferred revenue treatment Debs would have built differently → Why the Excel API can't create a data table and what Claude did instead → Both grades and why Graham thinks Debs was harsh Why Wall Street Prep? Wall Street Prep is the trusted training provider for the world's top investment banks, private equity firms, Fortune 1000 companies and business schools.  Our online training and instructor-led boot camps are direct adaptations of our corporate training, making Wall Street Prep the ideal choice for those looking to break into finance. DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this video is for educational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, and you may lose some or all of your capital.  Past performance is not indicative of future results. Please conduct your own due diligence or consult with a certified professional before making any financial decisions. Financial & Valuation Modeling Certification Program Premium Package (DISCOUNT CODE: WTBD): https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/premium-package/ WTBD Newsletter:  https://webmail.wallstreetprep.com/whats-the-big-deal Socials: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wall-street-prep/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wallstreetprep/ Resources: https://linktr.ee/wallstreetprep

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Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
11 Ratings

About

Get the view from the inside. Every week, Graham Smith (ex-Ares) and Deborah Taylor (ex-Barclays) take a look at Wall Street’s headline-grabbing deals.  From mega-mergers and hostile takeovers to complex private credit transactions, they break down the why, the how, and the who behind the numbers.

Information

  • Creator
    Wall Street Prep
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    28
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 What's The Big Deal?
  • Show Website
    What's The Big Deal?

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