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.

4.4

517 ratings

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Richard Bookstaber on the B...

12.06.2021

The stock market has basically been a one-way ship for 20 months now. So of course, some people get nervous about that, and start wondering if we're in some unsustainable bubble that can only end badly. So what are the ...

Odd Lots episodes:

12.06.2021 Richard Bookstaber on the Big Structural Risk in the Market Right Now The stock market has basically been a one-way ship for 20 months now. So of course, some people get nervous about that, and start wondering if we're in some unsustainable bubble that can only end badly. So what are the ...
12.02.2021 Paradigm’s Matt Huang on the Biggest Crypto Fund Ever Raised Money continues to pour into the crypto space at a rapid clip. Institutions, VCs, private investors all seem to have gotten the bug over the last year. But, of course, the big gains have come to those who have been ...
11.29.2021 Why Job Openings Are Surging, Even With So Many People Out of Work Normally, economists expect a somewhat stable relationship between job openings and the unemployment rate. More job openings = more people are employed. Lately, however, the shape of this relationship has changed. Job openings are absolutely soaring. And yet total employment ...
11.25.2021 The White House’s Envoy on What They’re Doing To Fix the Ports Most of the big retailers have assured their customers that shelves will be stocked for the holidays this year. Nonetheless, there has been a lot of anxiety about shortages and supply chain disruptions all year. On this episode of Odd ...
11.22.2021 Jason Furman on Red-Hot Inflation and What To Do About It Inflation is hot. You can debate why that is, or how long it will last, or who is to blame, or whether elevated inflation is a worthwhile price to pay for a fast recovery. But, regardless, it exists. So what ...
11.18.2021 Here's Why It's So Hard to Fix the Corporate Bond Market The corporate bond market is huge and important, allowing U.S. companies to tap investors for much needed borrowing. But even as sales of bonds have been booming in recent years thanks to low interest rates, the overall structure of the ...
11.15.2021 ASML, the Obscure Powerhouse at the Cutting Edge of Chip Technology This year has brought fresh awareness to the complexity of the semiconductor supply chain. Taiwan Semiconductor, the big manufacturer, has become a household name. But there's another giant that hardly anyone outside of the chip industry has heard of. ASML ...
11.11.2021 This Is the Perfect Storm That Caused Grain Prices To Soar Inflation is running at its fastest pace in over 30 years. And one upward contributor to it is higher food prices. There are all kinds of things going on within food, but over the last year we've seen strong price ...
11.08.2021 Stinson Dean on the Lumber Crash That Followed the Boom These days, commodities around the world are on a tear. But earlier this year, there was a lot of fixation on one in particular: lumber. Lumber went absolutely parabolic in the spring before collapsing rapidly. What's interesting is that this ...
11.04.2021 Citi’s Matt King on Why Inflation Isn’t Transitory and the Fed May Induce a Recession Inflation is elevated these days, and markets around the world are pricing in rate hikes. However, risk assets like stocks are doing just fine. There seems to be some presumption that any Fed rate-hiking cycle will be mild and that ...
11.01.2021 This Is How They Could Literally Mint a Trillion Dollar Coin Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
10.28.2021 Craig Fuller on the Huge Challenge of Getting the Ports To Operate 24/7 In recent weeks, the White House has attempted to make a greater effort to improve the functioning of supply chains. One effort includes getting the Port of Los Angeles, and the various companies who operate there, to operate 24/7. But ...
10.25.2021 Dan Alpert on the Big Difference Between Now and the 1970s Official inflation measures in the U.S. remain elevated and so, of course, this has a lot of people thinking about the 1970s. Not only was this the last time the U.S. had a sustained period of high inflation, it was ...
10.21.2021 Axie Infinity, the Crypto Game That’s Grown Over 200x This Year Alone Bitcoin just hit an all-time high and crypto mania is in full swing. One of this year's big winners has to be Axie Infinity, a blockchain-based game, whose token AXS has surged over 200x just since the start of the ...
10.18.2021 Goldman’s Jeff Currie: It’s a Commodities Supercycle, and We Still Haven’t Hit Max Pain Back in January, we spoke with Jeff Currie, the Global Head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs. At the time, he was bullish on the commodities complex for several reasons. Since then, of course, we've seen several markets go on ...
10.14.2021 Ryan Petersen on How Global Supply Chains Have Gotten Even Worse We've been covering global supply chain pressures almost since the beginning of the year on Odd Lots. And with each episode the question is "ok, so when will things normalize?" But basically, not only have things not normalized, things have ...
10.11.2021 Michael Pettis on What Evergrande Means for China’s Macro Economy The implosion of Evergrande continues. And nobody knows exactly how the losses will be distributed. What will be the impact on creditors or people who have put down payments on homes that haven't been built yet? And what will the ...
10.08.2021 Introducing: Breakthrough On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We start with an examination of long Covid, a mysterious new illness that has stumped doctors attempting to ...
10.07.2021 Here Are the Biggest Problems Facing the Fed Right Now The Federal Reserve has a lot on its plate at the moment. Not only are "transitory" inflation pressures proving to be more stubborn than expected, but unemployment remains relatively high even as the U.S. economy recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic. ...
10.04.2021 This Is How the Trillion Dollar Coin Could End Debt Ceiling Fights for Good Every few years, people are reminded of the weird law the United States has: the debt ceiling. Congress has to vote affirmatively to raise the total outstanding legal stock of debt the country can take on. If Congress fails to ...
09.30.2021 Isabella Weber on China’s Vision for Making Markets Work For years, people have talked about China's ongoing process of opening up, or liberalizing its economy. And yet lately it's taken strong moves that seem to indicate a change in direction. It's cracked down on some of its largest tech ...
09.27.2021 This Is What the Pandemic Did to the U.S. Rail System The pandemic has obviously sent shockwaves throughout the supply chain. And, despite hopes of normalization, things might even be getting worse. The number of ships, for example, waiting to unload at the Port of Los Angeles has continued to grow. ...
09.23.2021 How To Understand the Inflation We’re Seeing Right Now Over the last several months, inflation has risen at a pace significantly faster than what economists have expected. Markets, and perhaps the Fed, take some solace in the fact that it can largely be tied to economic disruptions from the ...
09.20.2021 Understanding Evergrande, the Chinese Real Estate Conglomerate That’s Nearing Collapse If you've been following the wild ride that is Chinese real estate, then you've definitely heard of Evergrande. The price of its shares and bonds has been tumbling lately amid concerns about its cash flow and its model. But what ...
09.16.2021 Stacy Rasgon on How the Global Chip Crisis May Be Getting Even Worse We've been talking about chips on Odd Lots for almost a year now. Thanks to a unique combination of events and constraints, capacity to make more semiconductors is incredibly tight. One industry that's lost out significantly is cars, as automakers ...
09.13.2021 Dan Wang Explains What China's Tech Crackdown Is Really All About Over the last several months, Chinese authorities have undertaken a sweeping campaign of change. We've seen crackdowns on big tech and fintech companies (like Ant Financial and Didi), online education companies, and now even the playing of video games. Investors ...
09.09.2021 Zoltan Pozsar on What’s Going on in Rates Markets Right Now There's a lot happening in the plumbing of the financial system. The Federal Reserve's reverse repo facility has seen huge takeup from financial market participants seeking to park excess cash. Meanwhile, the central bank has also announced the start of ...
09.06.2021 Patrick O'Shaughnessy on the Next Big Thing in Passive Investing Passive investing is kind of boring. You dump your money in an index fund and that's it. The industry hasn't really seen big innovation since ETFs were invented in the 1990s. Enter custom indexing. Custom indexing allows asset managers to ...
09.02.2021 Omair Sharif Explains How Inflation Measures Really Work When people think about what inflation is, they might first think about some broad index like the CPI. What does the the CPI really tell us? And how is it constructed? And how much does its rise and fall relate ...
08.30.2021 How Solana and Pyth Aim To Take DeFi to the Next Level There's obviously a lot of interest in crypto and DeFi these days. And while it's growing rapidly, it's still not cutting much into traditional finance business lines. For the most part, trading on blockchains is slow and costly. But some ...
08.26.2021 Mitu Gulati and Ugo Panizza on Haiti’s Odious Post-Colonial Debt Nearly 200 years ago, the colonialist French power granted independence to Haiti. But it did so under the brutal condition that it pay 150 million francs in exchange for its freedom. This was a staggering sum that imposed a staggering ...
08.23.2021 A Conversation With Ajmal Ahmady, Afghanistan’s Former Central Bank Chief Over the last week and a half, the world has watched in shock at the dizzying speed of the collapse in Afghanistan. Events are still unfolding, so the future remains extremely uncertain. One former official who has been outspoken in ...
08.19.2021 David Woo on What the Economists Got Wrong About the Stimulus David Woo has always been one of the most outspoken voices on the street. A former top strategist at Bank of America, he is now publishing independently at his new site David Woo Unbound. On this episode, he argues that ...
08.16.2021 Neel Kashkari on the Fed’s Quest To Get To Full Employment The last two jobs reports have been strong, but the unemployment rate remains over 5%. And by some estimates, the economy is still 8 million jobs shy of where it would have been had it not been for the crisis. ...
08.12.2021 Brent Donnelly on What It Takes To Be a Winning Trader The last 18 months has seen an incredible influx of people getting into trading. Thanks to a combination of Robinhood, a bull market, and perhaps more free time, trading is part of popular culture to a degree we haven't seen ...
08.09.2021 Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan on the Economy and Monetary Policy Right Now The economy is in uncharted territory in more ways that one right now. Coming out of the worst of the pandemic, we're seeing a rapid pace of GDP growth, along with elevated inflation readings the likes of which we haven't ...
08.05.2021 Sam Bankman-Fried and Matt Levine on How the Crypto Market Really Works Sam Bankman-Fried is arguably the most important and powerful person in crypto. His crypto exchange FTX just raised $900 million and is growing like crazy. Meanwhile, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Matt Levine probably knows more about market structure than any other ...
08.02.2021 Gene Seroka on the Logistical Logjam at the Port of LA America's ports are a key source of congestion contributing to supply chain disruptions rippling through the economy. Things have gotten a little better, but very slowly. And the disruptions are expected to continue for quite some time. To understand more ...
07.29.2021 The Bathtub Episode: How the Pandemic Disrupted Plumbing When you think about building a new home, obviously you think of various constraints regarding land, labor, and raw materials. But, of course, you can't build a new home without other basics, like windows, sinks, and bathtubs (or showers). And, ...
07.26.2021 GXO's CIO on the Past, Present, and Future of Warehouses You can't talk about supply chains without talking about warehouses. Basically everything we buy at some point eventually sits in a warehouse. But warehouses themselves are changing. Whereas at one point, they were simple and straightforward — goods come in ...
07.22.2021 What Complexity Economics Can Add to Our View of the World Over the past year it's become clear that traditional economics doesn't necessarily do a great job of accounting for real world problems like transport gridlock or irrational decision makers. For instance, sawmills' first response to the Covid crisis was to ...
07.19.2021 Why Everyone's Experience Of Inflation Is So Different Inflation is running hot these days. But, even when the official measures were considerably cooler, there were many people who were skeptical and insisted that inflation was running hot and rampant. It turns out, nobody really experiences inflation similarly, and ...
07.15.2021 Vlad Zamfir on the Dangers of Unstoppable Software and What People Get Wrong About Blockchains Vlad Zamfir is something of a crypto legend. The researcher was early into Bitcoin, and he was part of the Ethereum Foundation before it launched. He's still an active researcher in the space, but he believes the people operating in ...
07.12.2021 The Labor Episode: How the Omni Hotel Chain Is Dealing With Hiring Right Now One of the big stories in the economy right now is the high number of unfilled job openings in the leisure and hospitality sectors. There are numerous theories for why these businesses have had a hard time hiring. And there ...
07.08.2021 Steve Keen Says Economists Get Everything Wrong (Especially About Climate Change) Mainstream economics has come under attack lately. People have begun questioning its understanding of things like inflation, monetary policy, deficits, and how best to get out of a downturn. Steve Keen, an independent renegade economist, has been preaching this for ...
07.05.2021 Ryan Holiday on Opening a Bookstore During a Pandemic Bookstores typically aren't seen as the most attractive businesses in the year 2021. Add in the pandemic, and that makes it even tougher. And if you're in Texas, dealing with multiple blackouts, then it gets even harder than that. Our ...
07.01.2021 This Is the Vision for DeFi Built on Bitcoin There's a lot of hype about so-called DeFi (decentralized finance) these days, and much of it is based on enthusiasm over what can be built on Ethereum. Ethereum is seen as easier to build on for multiple reasons. But the ...
06.28.2021 Tom Schmidt Explains What You Need to Know about DeFi By now you've no doubt heard about DeFi: the hot vision of crypto that aims to disrupt traditional lending and fundraising. But the space remains really difficult to grasp. There's all kinds of jargon — Automated Market Makers, Impermanent Loss, ...
06.24.2021 Hyun Song Shin on CBDCs and the Future of Central Banking The world's central bankers are facing challenges the likes of which they've never seen before. We're in a unique moment for the macroeconomy, coming out of the pandemic crisis at a rapid clip. What's more, the nature of money is ...
06.21.2021 The Trucking Episode: Why the Industry Is Such a Mess You can't talk about the problems in logistics and supply chains right now without talking about trucking. Once goods are unloaded from ships, trucks are the dominant mode of domestic freight. However, unlike shipping, the trucking industry was something of ...

Older episodes

Odd Lots

What's Odd Lots about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Odd Lots episodes:

Richard Bookstaber on the Big Structural Risk in the Market Right Now

Paradigm’s Matt Huang on the Biggest Crypto Fund Ever Raised

Why Job Openings Are Surging, Even With So Many People Out of Work

The White House’s Envoy on What They’re Doing To Fix the Ports

Jason Furman on Red-Hot Inflation and What To Do About It

Here's Why It's So Hard to Fix the Corporate Bond Market

ASML, the Obscure Powerhouse at the Cutting Edge of Chip Technology

This Is the Perfect Storm That Caused Grain Prices To Soar

Stinson Dean on the Lumber Crash That Followed the Boom

Citi’s Matt King on Why Inflation Isn’t Transitory and the Fed May Induce a Recession

This Is How They Could Literally Mint a Trillion Dollar Coin

Craig Fuller on the Huge Challenge of Getting the Ports To Operate 24/7

Dan Alpert on the Big Difference Between Now and the 1970s

Axie Infinity, the Crypto Game That’s Grown Over 200x This Year Alone

Goldman’s Jeff Currie: It’s a Commodities Supercycle, and We Still Haven’t Hit Max Pain

Ryan Petersen on How Global Supply Chains Have Gotten Even Worse

Michael Pettis on What Evergrande Means for China’s Macro Economy

Introducing: Breakthrough

Here Are the Biggest Problems Facing the Fed Right Now

This Is How the Trillion Dollar Coin Could End Debt Ceiling Fights for Good

Isabella Weber on China’s Vision for Making Markets Work

This Is What the Pandemic Did to the U.S. Rail System

How To Understand the Inflation We’re Seeing Right Now

Understanding Evergrande, the Chinese Real Estate Conglomerate That’s Nearing Collapse

Stacy Rasgon on How the Global Chip Crisis May Be Getting Even Worse

Dan Wang Explains What China's Tech Crackdown Is Really All About

Zoltan Pozsar on What’s Going on in Rates Markets Right Now

Patrick O'Shaughnessy on the Next Big Thing in Passive Investing

Omair Sharif Explains How Inflation Measures Really Work

How Solana and Pyth Aim To Take DeFi to the Next Level

Mitu Gulati and Ugo Panizza on Haiti’s Odious Post-Colonial Debt

A Conversation With Ajmal Ahmady, Afghanistan’s Former Central Bank Chief

David Woo on What the Economists Got Wrong About the Stimulus

Neel Kashkari on the Fed’s Quest To Get To Full Employment

Brent Donnelly on What It Takes To Be a Winning Trader

Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan on the Economy and Monetary Policy Right Now

Sam Bankman-Fried and Matt Levine on How the Crypto Market Really Works

Gene Seroka on the Logistical Logjam at the Port of LA

The Bathtub Episode: How the Pandemic Disrupted Plumbing

GXO's CIO on the Past, Present, and Future of Warehouses

What Complexity Economics Can Add to Our View of the World

Why Everyone's Experience Of Inflation Is So Different

Vlad Zamfir on the Dangers of Unstoppable Software and What People Get Wrong About Blockchains

The Labor Episode: How the Omni Hotel Chain Is Dealing With Hiring Right Now

Steve Keen Says Economists Get Everything Wrong (Especially About Climate Change)

Ryan Holiday on Opening a Bookstore During a Pandemic

This Is the Vision for DeFi Built on Bitcoin

Tom Schmidt Explains What You Need to Know about DeFi

Hyun Song Shin on CBDCs and the Future of Central Banking

The Trucking Episode: Why the Industry Is Such a Mess

Other shows like Odd Lots: