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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Is It Time For Public Check...

03.23.2023

When Silicon Valley Bank failed, the government stepped in and guaranteed that all accounts — even those well above the FDIC threshold for deposit insurance — would be made whole. So now people are wondering whether all accounts at every ...

Odd Lots episodes:

03.23.2023 Is It Time For Public Checking Accounts at the Fed? When Silicon Valley Bank failed, the government stepped in and guaranteed that all accounts — even those well above the FDIC threshold for deposit insurance — would be made whole. So now people are wondering whether all accounts at every ...
03.20.2023 Where Stress Is Showing in the $20 Trillion Commercial Real Estate Market Markets are suddenly on edge due to strains in the financial system. But banks aren't the only source of stress. Pockets of the commercial real estate market — which is worth around $20 trillion — are showing cracks as well. ...
03.17.2023 What the Dramatic Boom in Zero-Day Options Means for Stocks Zero- and one-day options give investors the ability to bet on the daily moves of the S&P; 500. In recent months, both big institutional investors and retail traders have gotten in on the action, creating a boom in trading volumes ...
03.16.2023 The Regulatory Blunder That Gave Us the Silicon Valley Bank Disaster Whenever a major financial institution collapses and needs a bailout, it's easy to say, "Where were the regulators?" But that's only a useful question if you can pinpoint the specific regulatory choices that led to any particular situation. So what ...
03.14.2023 Dan Davies On What Brought Down Silicon Valley Bank Silicon Valley bank collapsed at record speed. And the world is still trying to figure out what went wrong? How did a bank with a strong history, a strong brand, and a fairly conservative investment portfolio go belly up so ...
03.13.2023 How the Federal Reserve Grew More Powerful Than Anyone Ever Imagined In the short term, the Federal Reserve's job is straightforward. Raise or lower interest rates in order to meet its employment and inflation targets. But over the years, it has evolved to do a lot more than just set the ...
03.09.2023 Companies Are Telling Us the Real Reason They're Still Raising Prices The persistence of inflation is a bit of a mystery to economists. Many of the shocks of the last few years have faded. And the Fed has raised rates aggressively, with seemingly only a modest impact. So why are companies ...
03.06.2023 Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the Two Big Challenges Facing Crypto Crypto is facing two distinct, yet related problems. First, a bunch of people have lost money due to the decline in coin prices and the collapse of major firms, such as FTX. At the same time, regulatory scrutiny is also ...
03.02.2023 How Empty Land in the Arizona Desert Gets Turned Into Homes Homebuilders have experienced major whiplash over the last few years. The pandemic originally caused them to slam the brakes on new development. Then the housing boom happened and they raced to catch up and build — but then they ran ...
02.27.2023 Why We Don't Build More Apartments for Families The vast majority of urban apartments in the US are geared towards single occupants, couples without kids or maybe young professionals with roommates. It's hard to find apartments with the kind of layout that would fit families. Anyone who's gone ...
02.23.2023 Why Interest Rates on Savings Accounts Are Still So Low The Federal Reserve has been raising benchmark borrowing rates at the fastest pace in decades, but the interest rate paid out to millions of people with bank accounts is still stuck at almost zero. According to data from Bankrate, the ...
02.20.2023 A Former CIA Official on One Year of Russia's War in Ukraine It's been one year since Russia invaded Ukraine in an event that set off a chain reaction of both geopolitical and economic consequences. So what have we learned from the past twelve months? And what is the future of this ...
02.17.2023 Brian Deese on the Legislative Legacy of President Biden's First Two Years President Biden came into office with an incredibly slim legislative majority. And yet despite just 50 Democratic seats in the Senate, the first two years of Biden's Presidency saw the passage of some extremely ambitious laws. The potential exists for ...
02.16.2023 This Is What Happens if the US Actually Hits the Debt Ceiling The US is in the middle of another debt ceiling fight. The expectation is that it will get lifted before we hit the so called "drop dead" date — but what happens if Congress does not authorize more debt financing? ...
02.13.2023 What Happens Now to All the Laid Off Tech Workers? The US labor market looks rock solid. The unemployment rate is at its lowest level in 50 years, while layoffs continue to trend downward. But there's one glaring exception and that's the tech industry. Nearly every major tech company has ...
02.10.2023 Jan Toporowski Explains Why Capitalists Dislike Full Employment In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, the work of John Maynard Keynes experienced a revival, as people sought answers to the problem of sluggish growth. In this cycle, sluggish growth isn't the problem. If anything, you hear business ...
02.09.2023 Introducing: Foundering - The John McAfee Story The new season of Bloomberg's Foundering podcast retraces the life and gruesome death of John McAfee. In the 1980s and ’90s, the McAfee name was synonymous with computer antivirus software, and he helped establish the modern cybersecurity industry. But afterward, ...
02.09.2023 Fabio Natalucci on How to Think About Financial Risk Right Now The Federal Reserve raised interest rates at the fastest pace in decades in 2022. But despite the rapid shift in borrowing costs, not much in the financial system actually 'broke.' Stocks and other risk assets went down, but aside from ...
02.06.2023 Steve Eisman on the 'Paradigm Shift' Happening in Markets Right Now After a decade of dominance, 2022 saw tech stocks badly underperform the rest of the market. However, so far in 2023, tech stocks and other speculations have surged again. According to Steve Eisman, what we're seeing is the natural process ...
02.01.2023 Viktor Shvets Declares Victory for Team Transitory and the Soft Landing It was looking bad there for awhile for Team Transitory. Anyone who had previously even uttered the word "transitory" in regards to inflation was regretting having used it. But lately the term is creeping back in, particularly as inflation decelerates ...
01.30.2023 The "Big Shift" That's Finally Causing Rents to Fall Rent inflation went wild in 2021 and 2022, turning it into one of the most substantial drivers of overall inflation. But good news: it seems pretty clear that rents are now finally falling. Private sector measures, from companies like Apartment ...
01.26.2023 Why Corporate America Still Runs on Ancient Software That Breaks Southwest Airlines had a disastrous holiday season, thanks in part to a software bug that left crews out of place and grounded thousands of flights. But Southwest isn't alone in having software in the headlines lately. The New York Stock ...
01.23.2023 What The Heck Is Happening With the Price of Eggs? The price of eggs rose 60% in 2022, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Meanwhile, wholesale egg prices are up 300% in the last year, creating a chart that looks almost parabolic. So what's going on? And is there ...
01.20.2023 The 'Widowmaker' Crypto Trade That Helped Blow Up an Industry Over the last year, numerous things have gone wrong for the crypto industry. (Too many to list.) But one thing we've learned is that there's an incredibly high degree of interconnectedness between various firms, all borrowing and lending from each ...
01.19.2023 Isabella Weber On a New Way to Think About Inflation In economics, there tends to be two dominant ways of thinking about inflation. Either you agree with Milton Friedman, who described inflation as always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon (the result of too much money printing). Or you're more of ...
01.16.2023 Ex-Logger Aims to Beat Elon Musk in Electric Trucks While electric vehicle use is growing rapidly, the internal combustion engine remains completely dominant in the world of heavy trucks. At some point in the future, Tesla has a plan to commercialize an electric semi, but nobody really knows when. ...
01.13.2023 Why Banks Are Suddenly Borrowing From the Fed's Discount Window The discount window at the Federal Reserve allows banks to borrow money at an above-market rate in exchange for high-quality collateral. The facility is always available to use, but typically nobody does. Not only is the borrowing costlier, there's also ...
01.12.2023 Neil Dutta and Conor Sen on the Chances of a US Soft Landing The most recent jobs report has revived talk that the US economy might pull off the fabled "soft landing." Jobs are still growing nicely and the unemployment rate is at a 50-year low. But wages are decelerating and there are ...
01.09.2023 What Truckers Already Know About the Future of Electronic Worker Surveillance Thanks to work from home, and other trends, workers are being electronically monitored by their bosses like never before. But some industries have had experience with this for awhile. Truck drivers, in particular, have been under legally-required electronic monitoring for ...
01.05.2023 Flexport CEO Says a ‘Great Recession’ Is Here for Global Shipping Back in early 2021, Ryan Petersen was one of the first people we spoke to on the Odd Lots podcast about supply chain snarls and high shipping costs. The founder and co-CEO of Flexport has since gone on to become ...
12.30.2022 The AMA Episode: Tracy and Joe Answer All Your Questions In this special episode, Tracy and Joe reach into the mailbag and take some questions about Odd Lots, and the things regularly covered on the show. We also hear from our producer Carmen Rodriguez, who joins as a guest host ...
12.29.2022 Odd Lots Revisited: Our First Episode with Tom Keene Odd Lots is seven years old now, having started in late 2015. When it began, we really didn't know what the show was going to be or be about. To end 2022, we decided to revisit our very first episode, ...
12.26.2022 Why the Price of Plastic Is Crashing After a Record Surge Plastic is in almost everything and prices of polypropylene, polyethylene and a host of other polymers went nuts in 2021, surging to record highs. Now they've come crashing back down to Earth and have reached a two-year low. So what ...
12.22.2022 What a Bakery Can Tell Us About the Economy Right Now We talk a lot about macroeconomic trends on the podcast. What's happening with inflation? Is the labor market too hot? Will there be a recession next year? On this episode of Odd Lots, we take a closer look at how ...
12.19.2022 Where Things Stand Now With Inflation and the Fed Last week was a big one. On Tuesday, we got a CPI report that came in substantially cooler than expected. Then on Wednesday, the Fed hiked 50 basis points, which was a step down from the series of 75 basis ...
12.15.2022 Younger and Menand Explain How We Got the Modern Banking System The US financial system today is pretty much taken as a given. We have the Federal Reserve, which sets interest rates and provides various liquidity backstops. We have regulated banks, which lend and create money and have access to the ...
12.12.2022 This Is What We Know About How Tether Works 2022 has seen numerous crypto disasters, most notably FTX. Also the price of most coins has tumbled massively. One coin that's done fine is the stablecoin Tether, which is interesting, because its had so many naysayers for so long. There ...
12.08.2022 What Extreme Weather Events Are Doing to Global Insurance Markets Heatwaves, droughts, hurricanes, floods... in a year of commodity shortages and supply chain disruptions, a host of extreme weather events have added stress to the system. So how do companies address the financial risks associated with these events? Catastrophe bonds ...
12.05.2022 Brad DeLong on the FTX Collapse and the South Sea Bubble We're in the aftermath of an extraordinary bubble in cryptocurrencies and the collapse of FTX is a defining chapter of the industry's turmoil. But what does history tells us about the cycle of bubbles and busts? Which past manias are ...
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 ...

Older episodes

Odd Lots

What's Odd Lots about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Odd Lots episodes:

Is It Time For Public Checking Accounts at the Fed?

Where Stress Is Showing in the $20 Trillion Commercial Real Estate Market

What the Dramatic Boom in Zero-Day Options Means for Stocks

The Regulatory Blunder That Gave Us the Silicon Valley Bank Disaster

Dan Davies On What Brought Down Silicon Valley Bank

How the Federal Reserve Grew More Powerful Than Anyone Ever Imagined

Companies Are Telling Us the Real Reason They're Still Raising Prices

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the Two Big Challenges Facing Crypto

How Empty Land in the Arizona Desert Gets Turned Into Homes

Why We Don't Build More Apartments for Families

Why Interest Rates on Savings Accounts Are Still So Low

A Former CIA Official on One Year of Russia's War in Ukraine

Brian Deese on the Legislative Legacy of President Biden's First Two Years

This Is What Happens if the US Actually Hits the Debt Ceiling

What Happens Now to All the Laid Off Tech Workers?

Jan Toporowski Explains Why Capitalists Dislike Full Employment

Introducing: Foundering - The John McAfee Story

Fabio Natalucci on How to Think About Financial Risk Right Now

Steve Eisman on the 'Paradigm Shift' Happening in Markets Right Now

Viktor Shvets Declares Victory for Team Transitory and the Soft Landing

The "Big Shift" That's Finally Causing Rents to Fall

Why Corporate America Still Runs on Ancient Software That Breaks

What The Heck Is Happening With the Price of Eggs?

The 'Widowmaker' Crypto Trade That Helped Blow Up an Industry

Isabella Weber On a New Way to Think About Inflation

Ex-Logger Aims to Beat Elon Musk in Electric Trucks

Why Banks Are Suddenly Borrowing From the Fed's Discount Window

Neil Dutta and Conor Sen on the Chances of a US Soft Landing

What Truckers Already Know About the Future of Electronic Worker Surveillance

Flexport CEO Says a ‘Great Recession’ Is Here for Global Shipping

The AMA Episode: Tracy and Joe Answer All Your Questions

Odd Lots Revisited: Our First Episode with Tom Keene

Why the Price of Plastic Is Crashing After a Record Surge

What a Bakery Can Tell Us About the Economy Right Now

Where Things Stand Now With Inflation and the Fed

Younger and Menand Explain How We Got the Modern Banking System

This Is What We Know About How Tether Works

What Extreme Weather Events Are Doing to Global Insurance Markets

Brad DeLong on the FTX Collapse and the South Sea Bubble

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

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