Odd Lots
Episodes
Coming Soon: The ETF Story
19 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The creation story of the first exchange-traded fund is actually the best way to understand how they work. And it's not just educational, it's enterta...
How To Analyze A Marijuana Stock
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Marijuana stocks have been on a tear recently, as investors bet on the explosion of a brand new, legalizing market. But, how should investors actually...
Saudi Arabia's IPO Drama
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A little over two years ago, Saudi Arabia revealed plans to IPO part of its huge state-owned national oil company. The listing would have been the lar...
What David Barse Learned From Watching A Credit Fund Blow Up
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
David Barse was the CEO of Third Avenue Management when one of its credit funds melted down in late 2015. The collapse of the fund touched off a signi...
How To Create The Safest Bank In America
24 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What if there were a bank that could never experience a run? And furthermore, what if it paid higher interest rates on deposits than what you could ge...
What Investors Should Know About The Correlation Between Bonds And Stocks
17 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Sixty percent in equities/40 percent in bonds is a popular, general approach to structuring a diversified portfolio. In theory, when times are good, y...
A Forensic Accounting Expert Explains How Companies Trick Investors
10 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Companies have all kinds of discretion in how they recognize revenue and costs. Some of this is legit. Some of this is fraud. On this week's episode o...
Matt Levine Dissects Elon Musk's Controversial Tweet
04 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There's been an intense debate about what Tesla CEO Elon Musk meant when he tweeted in early August that he was taking the company private and that fu...
The Time One Of Our Co-Hosts Launched His Own Cryptocurrency
27 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Joe Weisenthal is a co-host of the Odd Lots podcast. He also once launched his own cryptocurrency called Stalwartbucks. On this week's episode, we spe...
An Emerging Markets Fund Manager Describes What's Happening In Turkey Right Now
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Are you confused about the crisis in Turkey? Today's episode will get you cleared up. This week on Odd Lots, we spoke to Paul McNamara, an investment ...
How Wall Street Started Selling You Financial Products
13 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Open any financial publication and you'll see ads for investment products: exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, and the like. Those ads can tell you a...
How A Post-Keynesian Economist Sees The Markets Right Now
06 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Srinivas Thiruvadanthai is the Director of Research at the Jerome Levy Forecasting Center, and one of the most interesting commentators on markets and...
Even The World's Greatest Investors Have Made Horrible Mistakes
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Here's some good news for investors: If you've ever made a disastrous trade, you're not alone. All of the greats have made horrible moves as well. On ...
Why Understanding Financial Fraud Is The Secret To Understanding Business
23 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to understand how the human body works, you can't just look at healthy humans. You need to examine the ill, so you can see how the body br...
How to Listen to What the Market Is Trying to Tell You
16 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For years, it was pretty quiet in markets. Stocks kept making new highs and volatility drifted to fresh lows. That's changed in recent months and ther...
This Is What's Actually Happening When The Government Auctions Bonds
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Thanks to the tax cuts, the U.S. deficit is expected to surge again. And of course that's brought greater attention to the government's semi-regular T...
The Internet Is Secretly Powered By Billions Of Tiny Auctions
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows that online advertising pays for a massive chunk of the internet that people know and love, whether it's social networking sites, news,...
The Creator of VaR Explains How Large Banks Measure The Risk Of Their Own Portfolios
25 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this year, markets were spooked by blow-ups in a number of volatility-linked products. But dealing with volatility is the foundation of risk m...
Meet The Chicago Floor Trader Who Helped Inspire The Tea Party Movement
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A pivotal moment in U.S. political history is when CNBC's Rick Santelli went on a gigantic rant against Obama's stimulus programs while on the floor o...
The Inventor Of 'Bond Vigilantes' Explains Why They Just Showed Up In Italy
11 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Longtime market analyst Ed Yardeni came up with the term "Bond Vigilantes" to describe the way bond market participants can punish governments who run...
This Is How The Chocolate Market Actually Works
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When you're eating a chocolate bar, there's a good chance you're not thinking about the complex commodity market that allows cocoa beans to make it in...
What the Finance Industry's All-Night Scavenger Hunt Is Actually Like
28 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For years, big banks, hedge funds and other investment firms took part in an epic scavenger hunt in New York. Inspired by the 1980 movie, “Midnight ...
This Is China's Plan To Be A Technology Powerhouse By The Year 2025
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The recent trade tensions between the Trump administration and China has shone a light on the country's ambitions to become a technology powerhouse, a...
Inside the Multi-Year Quest to Create a Bitcoin ETF
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When Bitcoin first began generating headlines, there were some who thought the cryptocurrency was a fraud and others who thought it was the next big t...
Bonus: The Pay Check, a New Podcast
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a big, expensive, global mystery. Why do women still make less money—a lot less—than men? In the US, the average woman makes 80 cents to ev...
This Is How The Paparazzi Business Really Works
07 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Everybody probably has some vague idea of what the paparazzi do. They ride around on motorcycles, hounding celebrities, and hopefully snapping photos ...
These Stories Of Horse Racing Gamblers Will Get You Psyched For The Kentucky Derby
30 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Kentucky Derby is coming up in early May, and it's time to get excited. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we talk to Bloomberg editor David Papadop...
Why The Entire Way We Talk About Millennials Is Wrong
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to millennials, the media has certain tropes that it likes to go back to. Millennials love avocados. Millennials aren't into homebuying....
We're Nominated For A Webby Award, And We Need Your Help!
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We've been nominated for a Webby Award in the business podcast category, and we need the support of our listeners to help us win. Go online to https:/...
Why A Florida Orange Grove In 1946 Is The Key To Understanding Regulation Of ICOs
16 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
By now, everyone's heard of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) where companies issue their own currency-like tokens. They boomed massively in 2017, alongsi...
This Is What A Trade War With China Would Actually Look Like
09 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Recent threats to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, coupled with China's own retaliatory announcements have raised the prospects of a trade war between...
An Economist Explains Why Losing Weight Is Kind Of Like Defeating Inflation
02 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of people would probably agree that there's something wrong with much of the traditional advice in how to lose weight -- or at least how it's im...
The World's Most Controversial Interest Rate Is Haunting Us Again
26 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Remember LIBOR? The London Interbank Offered Rate measures the cost of money when banks borrow from each other. It famously blew out during the financ...
What It Was Like In The Glory Days Of Trading Currencies In The Pits
19 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
These days, when you think of trading, you think of people sitting at a desk with a bunch of monitors, watching charts, and maybe making decisions bas...
For The First Time In Years, Why People Are Suddenly Talking About Inflation Again
12 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For years, nobody seemed particularly concerned about inflation. Outside of a few blips, in the wake of the financial crisis, people have become accus...
Why The Human Brain Loves To Be Lied To
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In theory, people should want to know accurate facts about the state of the world. In practice, it's not so simple. Because of the way we evolved, and...
Coming Soon: Decrypted Season 2
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Decrypted returns on March 6th with a brand new season. Here's a sneak peek of what's in store. We'll be releasing new episodes every Tuesday starting...
The NYC Fiscal Crisis Of The 1970s Has Some Important Lessons For Today
26 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1970s, NYC teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. This crisis lead to the dismantling of the city's generous social safety net. On this week's Od...
How One Of The Most Profitable Trades Of The Last Few Years Blew Up In A Single Day
19 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In recent years, one of the easiest ways to make money in this market has been to bet on low volatility. Up until recently, markets have been exceptio...
Coming Soon: What'd You Miss This Week
12 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This month, Bloomberg is excited to bring you a brand new show. Every Friday on What'd You Miss This Week, we'll feature the most interesting intervie...
Annie Duke Explains How To Apply Poker Skills To Markets And Other Business Decisions
12 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Anyone who watched poker on TV during the golden age of coverage a few years ago is familiar with Annie Duke. She's one of the most famous poker playe...
Why One Of The Most Successful Quant Funds Decided To Create Its Own Video Game
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Quantitative finance is red hot. These days, basically everyone (banks, hedge funds etc.) is hiring mathematicians and coders. So what differentiates ...
How The Opioid Crisis And The Trump Administration Are Changing Middle America's Economy
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
If you cover the economy from New York City or Abu Dhabi, it's easy to get caught up in a media bubble. But the U.S. economy is obviously not a monoli...
How Radical Demographic Shifts Around The World Are Changing How Assets Are Valued
22 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we think about financial assets, we usually think of their price as being derived from some set of intrinsic characteristics. A stock price may b...
This Explains Why Modern Markets Developed Where They Did
15 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For centuries, markets were highly-personalized things, often controlled by select groups of people who traded based on long-established and closely-k...
This Is What It Was Actually Like To Live Through The Tech Bubble
08 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We talk a lot about bubbles on this podcast. Often we talk about them from the perspective of a trader or speculator. But what about the people whose ...
These Will Be The Big Markets And Economics Stories In 2018
02 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On last week's episode of Odd Lots, Bloomberg's Chris Nagi and Matt Boesler gave us their takes for the biggest stories of the past year. So naturally...
These Were The Biggest Markets And Economics Stories of 2017
26 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The year is over, and now's the time to look back at the big stories of the past year. On this week's episode, we're joined by Chris Nagi and Matt Boe...
This Is How Algorithms Impact Every Aspect Of Our Lives, from News to Credit Scores to Stocks
18 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Algorithms. People talk about them all the time, particularly in relation to markets. But who actually designs them, and what do they do? On this week...
Two Researchers Explain How Quants Are Going To Revolutionize Long-Term Investing
11 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of computer-driven or "quant" investing, we often think fast moves, algorithms making buy and sell orders at incredibly short timeframes...
An MIT Professor Explains His Original Theory For How Markets Really Work
04 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There are two popular schools of thought with regards to how markets work. There's the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) which says that it's basical...
Coming Soon: Trillions, a New Podcast
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Money goes where it's treated best. That simple truth is a big reason why more and more money—trillions, in fact—flows into a powerful, low-cost t...
Why Historic Relationships in Markets Have Been Totally Upended
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This month we saw a small sell-off in markets that got big attention. How did we get to the point where a 1 percent fall in the S&P 500 over the c...
The World's Foremost Expert Explains How To Value Stock
20 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In this age of algorithms and quants, you hear less and less about good old stock picking. You know, like the style of investing associated with Warre...
This Is How a Currency Trader Actually Picks What to Buy and Sell
13 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most asset classes move in a fairly straightforward manner. They're either going up or down at any given time. But when it comes to currencies it's no...
History Has Some Ominous Warnings for Investors in Initial Coin Offerings
06 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
You can't go a day without hearing about ICOs or Initial Coin Offerings. By taking advantage of a regulatory gap and buzz surrounding cryptocurrencies...
Everything You've Been Taught About How to Value a Stock Might Be Wrong
30 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Investors are constantly poring over income statements from big companies to figure out whether they should buy or sell the business's stock. But shou...
ETFs Are Eating the Financial World and They're Not Done Yet
23 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
By now, almost everyone in financial markets is familiar with ETFs (exchange-traded funds), and how they allow investors to move quickly in and out of...
How One Trader Won Big While Everyone Else Panicked on Black Monday
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday October 19th, 1987, the Dow Jones fell 508 points in a one day crash that will forever be known as "Black Monday". In honor of the 30th anni...
What We Can Learn About Market Liquidity By Looking At Everyday Life
09 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
"Liquidity" is one of the most widely-talked about yet least understood concepts in markets. Roughly speaking, a market is liquid if you can transact ...
Inside the Changing World of the Sell-Side Analyst
02 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The world of sell-side analysts has been upended in recent years with intense competition, new technology and regulation in the form of MIFID. At the ...
Revisiting The Strange Story Behind the Beanie Babies Bubble
25 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
To wrap up our series on financial bubbles, the Odd Lots podcast looks back at an early episode, focusing on one of the most iconic bubbles of the 20t...
The Baseball Card Bubble Can Tell You A Surprising Amount About How Markets Work
18 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There's a good chance that if you were a boy in the early 90s that you were a collector of baseball cards. For a few years, the baseball card industry...
How an Austrian Economist Explains The Tulip Bubble
11 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The tulip bubble is the quintessential bubble. If you want to call something a bubble, just mutter something about tulips, and everybody will know wha...
This Is What Happened During The Great Florida Real Estate Bubble
04 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
During the 2008 financial crisis, Florida was an epicenter of the real estate meltdown. But for decades before that, the state has been characterized ...
This Is What All Great Stock Market Bubbles And Crashes Have in Common
28 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Markets are at their most exciting when they're in a bubble. Spectacular fortunes can be made and lost in the blink of an eye. So how do bubbles form ...
What Looking Inside a Bank Archive Can Tell Us About Modern Finance
21 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Royal Bank of Scotland has been around, in one form or another, for hundreds of years. The company keeps artifacts from its lengthy history in an arch...
The Biggest Lesson Investors Should Have Learned From the Crisis
14 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It's been 10 years since the start of the credit crunch that eventually led to the global financial crisis. For many investors, the events of 2007 to ...
What Diner's Club Card Reveals About the Nature Of Money
07 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We use money everyday, but it's rare to actually think about what money is or what it represents. And in fact many of the people who are the closest t...
How The Bond Market Changed During A Veteran Trader's Decades On Wall Street
31 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most people have some kind of hazy conception of how the stock market works. Stocks are simple to understand, and there are only so many of them out t...
What It's Like to Suddenly Become a Bond Manager in the Credit Crisis
24 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We talk a lot on Odd Lots about the idea of investing. But what's it like to actually have to put money to work in some of the trickiest investing env...
Why Wheat is the World's Most Exciting Market Right Now
17 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Financial markets around the world are stuck in a long period of low volatility and boredom. But one pocket is seeing some wild action -- grains. Spri...
How A Former Wall Street Trader Cracked The World Of Betting On Baseball
10 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It's no secret that a lot of people in finance like to bet on things. But how many of them take the time to actually beat the house in gambling? On th...
Why a Natural Gas Company Is Shaking the World of Islamic Finance
03 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this month, Dana Gas, a UAE-based company, rocked the world of Islamic finance by announcing that one of its Shariah-compliant bonds was, well...
This Is What a Real-Life Wendy Rhoades Actually Does
23 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On the TV show "Billions," one of the most important characters is Wendy Rhoades, the psychologist at Axe Capital who helps traders get out of their s...
Inside The Booming World of Initial Coin Offerings
16 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
By now everyone's heard of Bitcoin, and probably has an opinion on it. But the world of cryptocurrencies has a new object of fascination: ICOs. Wherea...
The True Story Of America's Catfish Gold Rush
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
America has had many well-known booms and busts in its history: Real estate, internet stocks, Beanie Babies... too many to list. But did you know ther...
Why Everyone's Talking About the VIX and 50 Cent
02 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For the past few years, everyone in markets has been talking about nothing. Market moves have been subdued and the Chicago Board Options Exchange's Vo...
Poker Legend Phil Hellmuth Has Advice That Traders Should Hear
26 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Phil Hellmuth is one of poker's biggest stars. His success is undeniable, as he's won 14 bracelets at the World Series of Poker, more than anyone else...
What a 150-Year Old Indian Railway System Tells Us About Trade
19 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It's no secret that international trade has been criticized lately. But why exactly are countries generally happy to trade within their borders -- fro...
How Instagram Turned Into a Giant Market for Food
12 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Avocado toast, unicorn frappuccinos, and kale salads. Taking photos of your food and putting them on Instagram is a now a huge trend that's transformi...
How a Fund Manager's Trying to Fix Some of the Mideast's Issues
05 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about the Middle East what springs to mind? Perhaps oil, maybe political instability, terrorism or even war. On this week's episode of ...
One Of The Top Chess Players Talks Computers & Options Trading
28 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we talk to Hikaru Nakamura, one of the best chess players in the world. Currently ranking in the top s...
How to Use Pop Music to Forecast the Stock Market
21 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When most people analyze the stock market, they look at stuff like revenues, earnings, valuations, and economic conditions. But some people like to lo...
What Happens When Markets As We Know Them Cease to Exist
13 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What if you woke up tomorrow and found the U.S. stock market was closed for good? That happened to investors in the Russian market after the communist...
Inside the Hidden Cycles That Rule Markets and Life
07 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
History, as you may have heard, has a tendency to repeat. But does it repeat in ways that are measurable and predictable? We speak with Peter Borish, ...
This Is How You Know When the Stock Market Is in a Bubble
31 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fascinating market phenomenons is the bubble. When they occur, fortunes are made and lost, and the full spectrum of human emotions, fr...
How a Fund Manager Teaches His Kids About Money and Banking
27 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Plenty of people pay their kids an allowance to teach them the value of hard work and earning money. But our guest on this week’s Odd Lots podcast t...
What the Berkshires Learned by Launching its Own Currency
24 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
"Buy local" is a mantra that has appeal across the political spectrum. Small communities have preached this gospel for a long time. Our current presid...
How the Biggest Bull Market Could Go on for a Whole Lot Longer
10 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A few weeks ago on the Odd Lots podcast, we talked to Paul Schmelzing, a Ph.D candidate at Harvard, who explained how the bull market in U.S. Treasuri...
The Incredible True Story of the Real Life 'Trading Places'
03 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If you have any interest at all in finance, then it's mandatory to have seen the 1983 movie "Trading Places." You remember, right? Two wealthy Philade...
Could Buddhism Save The Global Economy?
24 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There's a widespread sense that something remains broken in the global economy. Despite a comeback in official measures of economic performance, like ...
How Poker Explains the Battle of Passive and Active Investing
17 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Among the biggest trends in the world of markets is the rise of passive investing. Rather than pay high fees to active mutual fund managers (who often...
Why It's Really Hard to Create a New Currency in a Revolution
10 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Creating a new form of money is always tough. Will it hold its value? Will people trust it? Will people use it? All these challenges are even tougher ...
Why Negotiating a Ransom Is the Trickiest Trade in the World
03 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There are all sorts of reasons why markets break down. A lack of trust. Incomplete information. Divergent incentives. A lack of experienced actors. So...
64: Stay in School, Even if You're Planning to Join the Mob
27 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It's almost a truism that better-educated people earn more money. But suppose you're not interested in a normal job? What if you want to go into the m...
63: This Is How Monetary Policy Works in The Islamic State
20 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Islamic State is mostly discussed in terms of its threat to the safety and security of the world. But as a geopolitical entity, its leadership has...
62: How The Biggest Bull Market Could Come Crashing Down
13 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The stock market is currently in one of its longest bull markets ever, but that doesn't hold a candle to what's going on bonds. According to Paul Schm...
61: Here's What's Going to Happen in 2017
06 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the start of the new year! 2016 defied almost everyone's expectations, but that won't stop us from making predictions for 2017. On this epi...
60: These Were the Most Interesting Stories of 2016
23 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
It was quite a year, 2016! Trump and Brexit alone made it one for the history books. But there was more than political upheaval. In this end-of-year e...