Matt Levine

speaker

4,268 appearances 11 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 4d ago

Matt Levine’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 11 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 5.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

Money Stuff: The Podcast · No Kiddie Pool · 31 Jul 2026 podcast

The retail clients, yeah, they're going to buy whatever you sell them. voice-verified

And so the job of the structured notes business is to sell them the stuff you want to sell. voice-verified

And what happened here, I think, it looks to me from looking at these structured notes, is that the banks wanted to buy puts on SpaceX. voice-verified

They wanted to buy protection against SpaceX going down, probably because they had other clients who wanted to buy it from them and they wanted to buy it from someone else. voice-verified

And it is actually very easy to buy puts in the form of a structured note. voice-verified

And so these structured notes have roughly the shape of the retail investors give the bank money. voice-verified

The bank holds onto the money for a while, for a year or two. voice-verified

When the note expires in a year or two, the bank gives the customer's money back with a big interest payment. voice-verified

So there's one, there's a Morgan Stanley one that pays back voice-verified

$140 on the dollar. voice-verified

So you put in $100 today, in 18 months you get back $140. voice-verified

Unless SpaceX is down a lot. voice-verified

I think in that case it's down 50%. voice-verified

If SpaceX is down 50%, then you lose the same percentage of your money. voice-verified

So if you put in $100, SpaceX is down 60%, you get back $40. voice-verified

Got you. voice-verified

So that to Morgan Stanley looks like they have bought a put on SpaceX. voice-verified

Like they have bought insurance on SpaceX's stock from their retail customers. voice-verified

It doesn't say that. voice-verified

What it says is like, this is a thing that is linked to the price of SpaceX. voice-verified

Showing 2321–2340 of 4,268 · page 117 of 214