Odd Lots

By Bloomberg

What's Odd Lots about?

Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway analyze the weird patterns, the complex issues and the newest market crazes. Join the conversation every Monday and Thursday for interviews with the most interesting minds in finance, economics and markets.

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The Covid Protests in China...

12.01.2022

China has seen a surge in protests in cities all around the country, targeted at the country's Covid Zero policies. But nearly three years into this pandemic, why did they happen now? How does recent economic weakness factor into the ...

Odd Lots episodes:

12.01.2022 The Covid Protests in China and Why They Happened Now China has seen a surge in protests in cities all around the country, targeted at the country's Covid Zero policies. But nearly three years into this pandemic, why did they happen now? How does recent economic weakness factor into the ...
11.28.2022 This Is What Happens to Silicon Valley in a Downturn The US economy may not be in a recession, but Silicon Valley, which had a mega-boom throughout the 2010s, is in a downturn. Tech stocks have tanked and almost every day there are new reports about industry layoffs. So what ...
11.23.2022 Jim Chanos on Crypto, Tech and the Golden Age of Fraud Earlier this year we talked to the legendary short seller Jim Chanos, during which he warned of more pain ahead for speculative areas of tech. That call proved to be prescient by a number of measures. So where are things ...
11.21.2022 Truckers Are Working Countless Hours That They're Not Getting Paid For For years we've been hearing about a persistent shortage of truck drivers. But what if we're thinking about it wrong? What if the issue is that the shipping industry systematically mistreats or undervalues drivers, creating an ongoing and unsustainable churn? ...
11.18.2022 Matt Levine on the Collapse of FTX and Alameda It was on an episode of the Odd Lots podcast in April 2022 that Sam Bankman-Fried infamously characterized yield farming as a "box," in a metaphor that made the practice sound a lot like a ponzi scheme. Of course, in ...
11.17.2022 Understanding the Collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire The collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried empire is gigantic, sprawling and fast moving. While details are still coming out, it already ranks among the most prominent corporate disasters of all time and has left the entire crypto community reeling. To ...
11.14.2022 Guyana Is the Most Exciting Story in the World Oil Market We talk a lot about the US shale boom. And we talk a lot about OPEC. But one of the most exciting stories in the global oil industry is the incredible rise of Guyana, which has seen a massive amount ...
11.10.2022 Isabella Weber On Germany's Plan to Cap the Price of Gas The surge in gas costs in Europe threatens to impose massive pain on households and cripple energy-intensive heavy industry. So there has been a lot of urgency on the part of governments to figure out a way to ease the ...
11.07.2022 Josh Younger on the Origin Story of the Shadow Banking System There are a bunch of historical analogies that people like to reach for in order to describe some of the economic trends we're seeing today. There's obviously the period of high inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s, or the ...
11.03.2022 Mark Bergen on Apple's Threat to the Online Ad Industry After years of basically printing money, the big online Internet behemoths are starting to stumble for various reasons. There's the macro slowdowns. New competition. And just basic threats to the way they do business. One major change has come from ...
10.31.2022 Hyun Song Shin Explains Why This Dollar Shock Is So Unique It's no secret that a strong US dollar causes the rest of the world pain, but the impact of this year's rally is shaping up to be a bit different than previous episodes of dollar strength. Hyun Song Shin is ...
10.31.2022 A Midwest Drought Is Creating a Supply Chain Crisis on the Mississippi River The Midwest has been gripped by drought this year and water levels on the Mississippi River have fallen to their lowest marks in decades. That's bad news for farmers growing crops and for anyone trying to actually move those crops ...
10.28.2022 This Is The Legal Mess Now Facing the Trucking Industry When people think about the so-called 'gig economy' they probably first think about Uber. But truck drivers are arguably the original gig workers. And driving a truck is one of the biggest professions in the US. So how should laws ...
10.27.2022 A Broken Market Is Causing Mortgage Rates to Surge US mortgage rates have jumped to a two-decade high, with the average 30-year home loan now running above 7%. Of course, this makes sense. The Federal Reserve is raising benchmark interest rates and that's supposed to translate into a tightening ...
10.24.2022 This Is What the US Just Did to China on Semiconductors Earlier this month, the Biden administration unveiled a new set of restrictions on exporting semiconductors and related technology to China. The actions are seen as a significant escalation of an ongoing effort to constrain China's domestic chip ambitions. But semiconductor ...
10.21.2022 How the Alberta NDP Competes In One of Canada's Most Conservative Provinces Alberta is one of Canada's most conservative provinces, with an economy and culture that might be compared to Texas. However despite this lean, the Alberta NDP, a social-democratic party, has been able to find electoral success. That may be owed ...
10.19.2022 Nouriel Roubini Predicts a Crisis 'Worse' Than the 1970s Nouriel Roubini is known for his bearish prognostications. And unfortunately, he still doesn't see any good news on the horizon. In fact, things are going to get much worse, says the famous economist and author of the new book "MegaThreats: ...
10.17.2022 Jigar Shah Just Became One of the Most Important Players in the Energy Transition Jigar Shah is the director of the loan office at the Department of Energy. For years, this division has had a modest amount of money, which it used to provide financing to promising projects in energy technology. With the passage ...
10.13.2022 Dan Wang On the Extraordinary Moment for China's Party Congress The Chinese government's biggest political gathering comes at a time of numerous challenges.Next week will see a major gathering of China's top officials known as the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. This event only happens twice every decade, ...
10.10.2022 This Is What 7% Mortgages Will Do To the Housing Market Thanks to the surge in mortgage rates, we've seen a historic collapse in mortgage affordability. New homebuyers are facing a massive sticker shock relative to what they could have paid just six months ago. So does this mean that house ...
10.06.2022 Toby Nangle on What We Just Learned From Gilt Market Madness UK financial assets just experienced once-in-a-generation type moves in the wake of the government's mini-budget announcement. Not only did both gilts and the pound sell off dramatically, they rebounded just as dramatically after intervention from the Bank of England. What ...
10.03.2022 What Is Really Going On With Rent and Healthcare Inflation? One of the biggest drivers of inflation is rent. Arguably, it's the whole ballgame right now. If rent growth stays firm, it's hard to see inflation getting back to the Federal Reserve's intended target anytime soon. If it rolls over, ...
09.29.2022 Marko Papic on What Markets Got Wrong About Russia's Invasion of Ukraine When Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a widespread expectation of a surge in prices for numerous commodities. That happened initially, but by and large things have not played out the way many investors would have anticipated. So what did markets ...
09.26.2022 Pierre Andurand on What Europe Needs to Do This Winter Europe is facing an energy crisis and there are some dire predictions about how it will deal with the upcoming winter, when demand for electricity and heating oil are expected to surge. But commodities trader Pierre Andurand sees a path ...
09.22.2022 Former CFTC Chair on How to Regulate Stablecoins Without Passing Any New Laws Stablecoin regulation has become a hot topic, and for very good reason. For one thing, it's an extremely fast growing space. Stablecoins are also a primary way that the crypto interacts with the banking system. And beyond that, as we ...
09.19.2022 The Ethereum Network Just Experienced a Monumental Development For years, it's been on the Ethereum roadmap to transition its blockchain from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Well, it's finally happened. This means that there are no more "miners" validating blocks on the Ethereum network. Instead, they've been replaced with "stakers" ...
09.15.2022 Senator Pat Toomey on the Bad State of Crypto Regulation Cryptocurrencies often don't fit neatly into traditional asset buckets. They're not exactly currencies. They're not exactly commodities. And while many share commonalities with stocks, there are differences there as well. As such, US regulators haven't come up with clear rules ...
09.11.2022 Zoltan Pozsar and Perry Mehrling Debate Bretton Woods 3.0 Credit Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar has found a new level of fame over the last year, arguing that we're witnessing the birth of a new currency regime that he calls "Bretton Woods 3.0". In this new era, the centrality of ...
09.08.2022 Ezra Klein on the Future of Supply-Side Liberalism To the surprise of many people, the Biden administration has notched some significant economic policy wins this year. The CHIPS Act represents a major piece of industrial policy aimed at bolstering the US semiconductor sector and making the supply chain ...
09.05.2022 Just How Bad Is the Economy Getting in China? In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, China arguably led the world out of the downturn. Its gigantic fiscal stimulus not only boosted domestic growth, it also created an incredible amount of demand for commodities all around the world. ...
08.31.2022 Neel Kashkari on the Fed's Commitment to Defeating Inflation At Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave a hawkish speech intended to leave no ambiguity about the Fed's commitment to defeating inflation. But what does that mean in practice? How aggressively will the Fed have to hike? And ...
08.29.2022 Joelle Gamble Explains the Confusing State of the US Labor Market The unemployment rate is down to 3.5%, which is far lower than just about anyone thought it would be a year ago. So that's great. On the other hand, measures of labor force participation are below where they were pre-crisis. ...
08.25.2022 Helene Meisler On What's Going On With the Stock Market Now The Federal Reserve is in tightening mode. And there's that old adage "don't fight the Fed" which means in theory it's a bad time for stocks. And yet we saw a surprisingly powerful rally off the bottom in June. But ...
08.22.2022 How Stablecoins Became a Powerful Force in Crypto In theory, what gets people most excited about crypto is lines going straight up. But one of the biggest successes in crypto is the rise of stablecoins. Basically, stablecoins allow people to hold dollar-linked assets directly on the blockchain. This ...
08.19.2022 This Is What Actually Determines the Price of A Gallon of Gas Gas prices are central to everything these days. Biden's approval rating seems to move inverse with the price of gasoline. The entire market started rallying after gasoline prices started moving lower in June. But then, what exactly determines the price ...
08.18.2022 This Is the Case for Building a More Robust Power Grid Thanks to surging energy costs and extreme weather events, there's a greater urgency to decarbonize the electricity grid. However, it's not enough just to add more solar panels, or wind turbines or even nuclear plants. We need a way to ...
08.15.2022 Just How Bad Will the Energy Crisis Be in Europe This Winter? As everyone knows, electricity prices in Europe have soared, due to a combination of factors, most prominently Russia's war in Ukraine and the curtailing of natural gas supplies. But how bad is it going to get this winter? Will Germany ...
08.11.2022 Pimco's Dan Ivascyn on the State of Markets Right Now Markets have staged an impressive bounce since the middle of June. Stocks are way up. Credit spreads have come in. Mortgage rates have tightened again. And long rates have mellowed out. So is the coast all clear? On this episode ...
08.08.2022 Jan Hatzius on the Narrow Path to Avoid a Hard Landing The multi-trillion dollar question for the US economy is “Can inflation drop to the Federal Reserve’s target without a substantial jump in the unemployment rate?” Everything is riding on this, as it informs the trajectory for the Fed and for ...
08.04.2022 Anna Stansbury on How to Boost Worker Bargaining Power Labor markets are considered to be "tight" right now, but wage growth continues to lag inflation. For decades, in fact, we've seen a steady decline in worker bargaining power, or labor's share of total income. So what would it take ...
08.01.2022 Benn Eifert On The Mania That Was Even Bigger Than Meme Stocks When people think about the market mania we recently experienced, the most glaring thing that comes to mind is the meme stocks. In early 2021, the huge moves in names like AMC and GameStop exemplified this new Robinhood, r/WSB, crypto ...
07.28.2022 What So Many People Get Wrong About The Energy Transition With energy prices booming, heatwaves ravaging Europe, and Russia going to war against Ukraine, there's an increased focus on the so-called energy transition. Interest in decarbonization is surging. But there's still a lot of ambiguity about what that might look ...
07.27.2022 A New Chilean Constitution Could Mean Big Changes to Copper and Lithium Mining In theory, a big shift towards renewable sources of energy (like wind and solar and electric vehicles) mean less money and power for Russia, and the OPEC nations. But new forms of energy also require resource extraction. And we've already ...
07.25.2022 What the Fed's Big Balance Sheet Unwind Means for Markets The Federal Reserve recently began shrinking its massive balance sheet, unwinding trillions of dollars worth of bond purchases that it started making during the depths effort to offset the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It's not the first time that ...
07.21.2022 Jason Calacanis On the Expensive Lesson Coming to Silicon Valley For years, venture capital firms have been pouring money into start-ups, trying to get a piece of the next Amazon or Apple. Valuations for new tech companies soared, and many of them took to crypto to explore new forms of ...
07.18.2022 Why the US Dollar Is Booming And Creating A Possible Doom Loop Every time a crisis hits, you get a new round of people warning about the end of US dollar dominance. The Covid crisis and its aftermath is no exception. It may be that the world will change over the long ...
07.15.2022 Matt Levine On What to Watch In Twitter vs. Elon Musk This week, Twitter sued Elon Musk, attempting to force him to make good on his 44 billion buyout offer for the company. This story has already been surreal in many ways, and now we might get an actual trial out ...
07.14.2022 The Bitcoin VC Who Just Infuriated The Bitcoin World If you've ever interacted with hardcore Bitcoin maximalists you might find some of them, at least, to be... abrasive. And it's not just no-coiners who are the target of their scorn. The real enemies are ex-maxis, who are viewed as ...
07.11.2022 Josh Younger Explains Why the Bond Market Has Been So Volatile The market for US Treasuries is arguably one of the most important and liquid markets in the world. But it's been experiencing a number of hiccups in recent years, such as the sudden selloff of March 2020. And in more ...
07.07.2022 The Moment a Most Famous Dotcom Millionaire Knew the Party Was Over The first real explosive Internet IPO was a company called TheGlobe.com. It was kind of a proto-social networking/message board site, and on the day it went public in 1998, its shares soared 606%. Its co-founders were briefly worth around $100 ...

Older episodes

Odd Lots

What's Odd Lots about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Odd Lots episodes:

The Covid Protests in China and Why They Happened Now

This Is What Happens to Silicon Valley in a Downturn

Jim Chanos on Crypto, Tech and the Golden Age of Fraud

Truckers Are Working Countless Hours That They're Not Getting Paid For

Matt Levine on the Collapse of FTX and Alameda

Understanding the Collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire

Guyana Is the Most Exciting Story in the World Oil Market

Isabella Weber On Germany's Plan to Cap the Price of Gas

Josh Younger on the Origin Story of the Shadow Banking System

Mark Bergen on Apple's Threat to the Online Ad Industry

Hyun Song Shin Explains Why This Dollar Shock Is So Unique

A Midwest Drought Is Creating a Supply Chain Crisis on the Mississippi River

This Is The Legal Mess Now Facing the Trucking Industry

A Broken Market Is Causing Mortgage Rates to Surge

This Is What the US Just Did to China on Semiconductors

How the Alberta NDP Competes In One of Canada's Most Conservative Provinces

Nouriel Roubini Predicts a Crisis 'Worse' Than the 1970s

Jigar Shah Just Became One of the Most Important Players in the Energy Transition

Dan Wang On the Extraordinary Moment for China's Party Congress

This Is What 7% Mortgages Will Do To the Housing Market

Toby Nangle on What We Just Learned From Gilt Market Madness

What Is Really Going On With Rent and Healthcare Inflation?

Marko Papic on What Markets Got Wrong About Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

Pierre Andurand on What Europe Needs to Do This Winter

Former CFTC Chair on How to Regulate Stablecoins Without Passing Any New Laws

The Ethereum Network Just Experienced a Monumental Development

Senator Pat Toomey on the Bad State of Crypto Regulation

Zoltan Pozsar and Perry Mehrling Debate Bretton Woods 3.0

Ezra Klein on the Future of Supply-Side Liberalism

Just How Bad Is the Economy Getting in China?

Neel Kashkari on the Fed's Commitment to Defeating Inflation

Joelle Gamble Explains the Confusing State of the US Labor Market

Helene Meisler On What's Going On With the Stock Market Now

How Stablecoins Became a Powerful Force in Crypto

This Is What Actually Determines the Price of A Gallon of Gas

This Is the Case for Building a More Robust Power Grid

Just How Bad Will the Energy Crisis Be in Europe This Winter?

Pimco's Dan Ivascyn on the State of Markets Right Now

Jan Hatzius on the Narrow Path to Avoid a Hard Landing

Anna Stansbury on How to Boost Worker Bargaining Power

Benn Eifert On The Mania That Was Even Bigger Than Meme Stocks

What So Many People Get Wrong About The Energy Transition

A New Chilean Constitution Could Mean Big Changes to Copper and Lithium Mining

What the Fed's Big Balance Sheet Unwind Means for Markets

Jason Calacanis On the Expensive Lesson Coming to Silicon Valley

Why the US Dollar Is Booming And Creating A Possible Doom Loop

Matt Levine On What to Watch In Twitter vs. Elon Musk

The Bitcoin VC Who Just Infuriated The Bitcoin World

Josh Younger Explains Why the Bond Market Has Been So Volatile

The Moment a Most Famous Dotcom Millionaire Knew the Party Was Over

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