Odd Lots

By Bloomberg

What's Odd Lots about?

Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway take you on a not-so random weekly walk through hot topics in markets, finance and economics.

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How Bond Defaults Are Chang...

12.02.2019

For years, defaults were few and far between in China's corporate bond market. Most investors thought that the Chinese government would never let companies — whether they be state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or private businesses — actually default on their debt. ...

Odd Lots episodes:

12.02.2019 How Bond Defaults Are Changing China's Markets For years, defaults were few and far between in China's corporate bond market. Most investors thought that the Chinese government would never let companies — whether they be state-owned enterprises (SOEs) or private businesses — actually default on their debt. ...
11.25.2019 This is How Economic Crisis and Precarity Shaped the Millennial Generation How do Millennials view investing and spending? How do the rising costs of healthcare, education, and housing affect their economic outlook? How does fear of climate change affect one's long-term life choices? These questions are crucial for understanding the perspective ...
11.18.2019 How A Former 'Magic: The Gathering' Player Became the Top Tournament Poker Player Of All Time According to the website The Hendon Mob, the top tournament poker player of all time is the American Bryn Kenney, who has won a staggering $55.5 million. In fact, he got there in just the last six months, having won ...
11.11.2019 Why The Repo Markets Went Crazy, And Why December Could Be Even Worse Back in September, chaos erupted in short-term funding markets, as the cost for financial institutions to borrow reserves soared. Immediately a major debate broke out over whether this represented a systemic problem for the financial system or merely a technical ...
11.04.2019 An Anthropologist Explains How Wall Street Culture Reshaped The Entire Economy Where did the notion come from that the obligation of a company's management is to maximize shareholder returns, even if it means pain for workers? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Karen Ho, a professor of anthropology ...
10.28.2019 Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great 'Whodunit' Of The Financial World You probably haven't thought much about the Taiwanese life insurance industry. Why would you have? But they're among the most fascinating entities in the financial world. And for a long time they've been a source of incredible mystery. They've built ...
10.25.2019 Coming Soon: Travel Genius Season 2 Bloomberg's Travel Genius podcast is back! After clocking another hundred-thousand miles in the sky, hosts Nikki Ekstein and Mark Ellwood have a whole new series of flight hacking, restaurant sleuthing, and hotel booking tips to inspire your own getaways—along with ...
10.21.2019 How Private Sector Balance Sheets Changed Recessions Can the U.S. economy have a recession without it turning into a crisis? In the old days, such garden-variety recessions were fairly common. These days, less so. But why is this? And can we go back to the old-style soft ...
10.14.2019 Why Governments Haven't Learned The Lessons Of Japan It's well known that Japan has (until recently) been mired in years of mediocre economic growth. And policymakers and economists use Japan as a warning for how developed economies can enter into prolonged slumps. But has anyone learned the lessons ...
10.07.2019 The Odd Lots Variety Show On September 19, 2019, Odd Lots hosted its first-ever live event at the WNYC Greene Space in downtown New York City. With an all-star lineup of guests, the show featured convicted white-collar criminal Sam Antar, a panel on sovereign debt ...
10.01.2019 Introducing Stephanomics Season 2 Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloomberg Economics, returns to bring you another season of on-the-ground insight into the forces driving global growth and jobs today. From the cosmetics maker in California grappling with Donald Trump's tariff war, to the coffee vendor ...
09.30.2019 How Financial Repression in China Helped Cause the Trade War For years, China has experienced blistering growth. Driven by an investment-heavy economic model, this growth has limited household income while subsidizing business. This system worked extraordinarily well for years, but the system has recently been hitting its limits. On this ...
09.23.2019 What Businesses Can Learn From the Collapse of Civilizations History is littered with collapsed civilizations ranging from the Maya to Angkor Wat. But what can they tell us about the world today, or doing business in it?. But what can they tell us about the world today, or doing ...
09.16.2019 Why The Dominant U.S. Dollar Refuses To Go Away For years, people have been predicting the demise of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Although the U.S. economy has been shrinking as a share of the world's GDP, the dollar continues to grow ever more dominant. Yet ...
09.09.2019 Huw van Steenis On What Central Banks Will Do Next Last month, central bankers gathered at the annual Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. A lot of the talk was about the limits of monetary policy when it comes to boosting economic growth and what negative interests could do to ...
09.02.2019 Why Value Investing Has Been Doing Terribly One of the oldest, most basic strategies in investing is value investing, which, for lack of a better way to put it, means "buy stocks that are cheap." Value investing, a style associated with Warren Buffett, systematically attempts to uncover ...
08.27.2019 Introducing Prognosis Season 3: Superbugs On this new season of Prognosis, we look at the spread of infections that are resistant to antimicrobial medicines. You're probably more likely to have heard of these as superbugs. Their rise has been described as a silent tsunami of ...
08.26.2019 How to Forecast the Future Every day, people are bombarded with predictions of what will happen in the future. In recent months, talk of 'inflection points' in the markets has heated up, and the possibility of the U.S. economic expansion, now the longest in history, ...
08.19.2019 John Hempton on What's Ailing Bank Stocks We live in a world of generally expensive stock markets and bank equities trading at 30-year lows. So says John Hempton, co-founder of hedge fund Bronte Capital and a former bank analyst, who also calls it "one of the great ...
08.12.2019 What Negative Interest Rates Mean for the World The amount of negative-yielding debt keeps climbing and now includes bonds issued by emerging market countries and some junk-rated companies. On this week's episode, we talk to Viktor Shvets, Macquarie's Head of Asia Strategy, about why interest rates keep getting ...
08.05.2019 How Science Fiction Explains the U.S.-China Trade War It's no secret that a lot of the trade tensions between the U.S. and China have centered on technology, and China has accused the U.S. of trying to stymie its economic development by suppressing its technological advancement. This week's Odd ...
07.29.2019 Here's How People Are Using Cryptocurrency in Venezuela Last month, Facebook announced it was launching its own cryptocurrency called Libra. Facebook says Libra is going to have all sorts of benefits, including helping people without traditional bank accounts and acting as an alternative form of money in countries ...
07.22.2019 The Bullish Case for WeWork Of all the “unicorn” startups in recent years, perhaps none induces more skepticism than WeWork. Thanks to its gigantic losses and unusual business practices, many view it as the ultimate emblem of Silicon Valley irrationality. But there are some bulls ...
07.15.2019 Why A Longtime Bull Just Flipped Very Bearish On The Stock Market There's always bears out there predicting that the stock market will tank. But many of them aren't worth listening to because they're always saying the same thing, regardless of the market environment. What's interesting, though, is when a longtime bull ...
07.08.2019 What Bitcoin Has To Do With The Dream Of Cryonics Bitcoin has been around for roughly a decade now, but people have been working on the dream of an anonymous, digital currency for a lot longer than that. On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with NYU professor Finn Brunton, ...
07.01.2019 Why a Strong Dollar Causes Most of the World Major Pain The vast majority of global trade is still denominated in U.S. dollars, making cross-border flows about currencies as much as manufactured goods. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Hyun Song Shin, economic adviser and ...
06.24.2019 One of Hong Kong's Most Famous Investors Gives His Vision of the City's Future There's been a series of historic marches in Hong Kong, with millions of people taking to the streets to protest against an extradition bill that they think will give China more power over the city. On this episode of Odd ...
06.17.2019 How Auction Guarantees Are Changing The World Of Art Famous, unique pieces of art are inherently illiquid. They don't sell very often, and pricing is inherently difficult to estimate. Nonetheless, it's a huge business, and investors have been attempting for a long time to turn art into a proper ...
06.10.2019 What Boy Band Sensation BTS Can Teach Us About Economics South Korean boy band BTS is rarely connected to economics, but as the biggest success to come out of K-Pop, it arguably should be. On this week's episode of Odd Lots, we speak to Euny Hong, the author of 'The ...
06.03.2019 Why President Trump's Move Against Huawei Is Such A Big Deal Earlier this month, President Trump escalated the trade tensions against China by limiting exports of U.S. technology to Huawei. But what is Huawei, and why is this such a big deal? On this week's episode, we speak to Dan Wang, ...
05.29.2019 Bloomberg Presents "What Goes Up" “What Goes Up” is a new show from Bloomberg that tracks the main themes influencing global markets. Hosts Sarah Ponczek and Mike Regan speak with guests about the wildest movements in markets and what they mean for your investments. The ...
05.27.2019 Meet The Godfather Of Cryptocurrency Bitcoin has been around for about ten years. But the dream of a decentralized, anonymous digital currency has been around for decades. On this week's podcast, we speak with one of the original godfathers of the space, David Chaum, an ...
05.23.2019 Bloomberg and Wondery Present: The Shrink Next Door Marty Markowitz had his share of problems. His parents had recently died. He had troubles at work. A failing relationship. He needed someone to help him through this rough patch in his life. So he decided to get some professional ...
05.20.2019 Behind the Scenes of Financial Fraud If you lived in NYC a few decades ago, you probably have heard of Crazy Eddie, an electronics retailer that was famous for its outlandish ads on TV. What most people didn't know until after it went public, is that ...
05.13.2019 What the Russian Revolution Can Teach Us About Bond Bubbles When talking government bond defaults, plenty of people think of Argentina and Greece. But the biggest sovereign debt default of all time was arguably Russia’s repudiation of debt in 1918, after the Bolshevik revolution. In this episode, we speak to ...
05.09.2019 Introducing: Business of Bees These days about one in three bites of food you eat wouldn’t be possible without commercial bee pollination. And the economic value of insect pollination worldwide is estimated to be about $217 billion. But as important as bees have become ...
05.06.2019 How A Poker Pro 'Reads' His Opponents Whenever poker is depicted on a TV show or in a movie there's a lot of emphasis placed on the art and science of reading the physical cues that players give off accidentally when attempting to conceal the motivations behind ...
04.29.2019 What Will Crypto’s Market Structure Look Like? Recently, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance delisted a Bitcoin offshoot, causing its price to fall. Crypto’s market structure is still in its early days, and the move raises questions around decentralization and the power of exchanges. Alex Gordon-Brander has been thinking ...
04.22.2019 The End of An Era for Odd Lots No, no, don't worry, the Odd Lots podcast isn't coming to an end. But for actual odd lots -- trades of securities in unusually-sized increments -- it's the end of an era. Some major banks announced recently that they're getting ...
04.17.2019 Introducing "What Goes Up," A New Show From Bloomberg On this new show from Bloomberg, hosts Mike Regan and Sarah Ponczek speak with expert guests each week about the main themes influencing global markets. They explore everything from stocks to bonds to currencies and commodities, and how each asset ...
04.15.2019 Why Foreign Investors Cooled On U.S. Debt There's something wrong with prices in funding and bond markets, according to this week's Odd Lots guest. Zoltan Pozsar is a former adviser to the U.S. Treasury turned strategist at Credit Suisse. He argues that sweeping changes in the world's ...
04.08.2019 MMT And Emerging Markets In discussions about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) you often hear that while it may be true that the U.S. has the space to expand its deficits significantly, that it doesn't apply to emerging markets. On this week's episode of the ...
04.01.2019 From MMT Advocate To Outspoken Critic Cullen Roche, the author of the financial blog Pragmatic Capitalism, explains why he went from an adherent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to one of its loudest critics.
03.25.2019 A Critic of Cryptocurrencies Says Bitcoin Needs To Be Burnt With Fire There's a problem in many debates about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. While many people are inclined to dismiss them as fraudulent ponzi schemes, most of those critics aren't particularly well informed by them, so their dismissals are hollow and uncompelling. ...
03.18.2019 The Evolution Of The Online Brokerage Business The online brokerage business burst on the scene in the late 90s, as at-home traders were lured to try their hand at winning big in the stock market. These days, investors are inundated with the message that they shouldn't try ...
03.11.2019 What's Next For Chinese Trade Talks China is front and center in the news again, thanks to the trade negotiations, as well as the National People's Congress, during which the government said it would target GDP growth between 6 and 6.5 percent. Brad Setser of the ...
03.04.2019 Canada's Cannabis Market So Far In mid-October last year, recreational cannabis became legal in Canada. Of course, there are all kinds of complications with any attempt to introduce such a new market. On this week's episode, we speak to Craig Wiggins, a member of a ...
02.25.2019 How To Analyze An IPO Some of Silicon Valley's biggest unicorns like Uber and Slack are expected to go public this year. But when companies finally pull the trigger and launch their IPOs, what factors should you keep in mind before investing? On this week's ...
02.18.2019 Tech Stock Bubbles In the 17th Century Jamie Catherwood is an investment analyst at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. He's also a major financial history buff, and tells us the story of the tech stock bubble in the 17th century, when investors went crazy for schemes that ...
02.13.2019 A Message from The Pay Check The Pay Check is collecting stories for our upcoming season, and we want to hear from you! Did having a kid change your career trajectory or the way you work? If you have anything you want to share, call and ...

Older episodes

Odd Lots

What's Odd Lots about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Odd Lots episodes:

How Bond Defaults Are Changing China's Markets

This is How Economic Crisis and Precarity Shaped the Millennial Generation

How A Former 'Magic: The Gathering' Player Became the Top Tournament Poker Player Of All Time

Why The Repo Markets Went Crazy, And Why December Could Be Even Worse

An Anthropologist Explains How Wall Street Culture Reshaped The Entire Economy

Why Taiwanese Life Insurers Are The Great 'Whodunit' Of The Financial World

Coming Soon: Travel Genius Season 2

How Private Sector Balance Sheets Changed Recessions

Why Governments Haven't Learned The Lessons Of Japan

The Odd Lots Variety Show

Introducing Stephanomics Season 2

How Financial Repression in China Helped Cause the Trade War

What Businesses Can Learn From the Collapse of Civilizations

Why The Dominant U.S. Dollar Refuses To Go Away

Huw van Steenis On What Central Banks Will Do Next

Why Value Investing Has Been Doing Terribly

Introducing Prognosis Season 3: Superbugs

How to Forecast the Future

John Hempton on What's Ailing Bank Stocks

What Negative Interest Rates Mean for the World

How Science Fiction Explains the U.S.-China Trade War

Here's How People Are Using Cryptocurrency in Venezuela

The Bullish Case for WeWork

Why A Longtime Bull Just Flipped Very Bearish On The Stock Market

What Bitcoin Has To Do With The Dream Of Cryonics

Why a Strong Dollar Causes Most of the World Major Pain

One of Hong Kong's Most Famous Investors Gives His Vision of the City's Future

How Auction Guarantees Are Changing The World Of Art

What Boy Band Sensation BTS Can Teach Us About Economics

Why President Trump's Move Against Huawei Is Such A Big Deal

Bloomberg Presents "What Goes Up"

Meet The Godfather Of Cryptocurrency

Bloomberg and Wondery Present: The Shrink Next Door

Behind the Scenes of Financial Fraud

What the Russian Revolution Can Teach Us About Bond Bubbles

Introducing: Business of Bees

How A Poker Pro 'Reads' His Opponents

What Will Crypto’s Market Structure Look Like?

The End of An Era for Odd Lots

Introducing "What Goes Up," A New Show From Bloomberg

Why Foreign Investors Cooled On U.S. Debt

MMT And Emerging Markets

From MMT Advocate To Outspoken Critic

A Critic of Cryptocurrencies Says Bitcoin Needs To Be Burnt With Fire

The Evolution Of The Online Brokerage Business

What's Next For Chinese Trade Talks

Canada's Cannabis Market So Far

How To Analyze An IPO

Tech Stock Bubbles In the 17th Century

A Message from The Pay Check

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