Odd Lots
Episodes
59: What Sneakers Can Tell You About How Financial Markets Work
16 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One of our favorite topics here at Odd Lots is market structure. On multiple occasions, for example, we've talked about how trading bonds is fundament...
58: Ignore Investing's Mathematical Underpinnings at Your Peril
09 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What's the optimum amount of money you should bet on a particular outcome? The answer is dictated by mathematics, yet plenty of people still go agains...
57: Was November the Start of a Huge Turning Point In Markets?
02 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Something huge happened in November. No, we're not talking about the U.S. presidential election. We mean the worst month in history for the the Bloomb...
56: How To Launch Your Own Form Of Money
25 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
By now you've probably heard of Bitcoin. But Bitcoin isn't the only digital currency. In fact, there are hundreds of "altcoins" out there, all of whic...
55: Here Are The Signs That A Civilization Is About To Collapse
18 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
All great civilizations eventually collapse. It's inevitable. So what are the signs of their demise? On the latest edition of Odd Lots, we speak with ...
54: How Trump Did Something Yellen, Draghi Could Only Dream Of
11 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot to process from last week's U.S. election. One surprising thing already is the market reaction. Equities surged following the vote, and ...
53: Why We Stopped Trusting Experts
04 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One could argue that "expert" has become a bad word. People routinely roll their eyes at the advice of experts and sometimes mock them. Perhaps nowher...
52: What Math Models of Herding Cows Can Teach Us About Markets
28 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Investors are often said to exhibit herding behavior when they follow each other into crowded positions — creating market bubbles that are susceptib...
51: Why Everyone Is Freaking Out About Globalization
21 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Dani Rodrik, a professor of International Political Economy at Harvard University, was writing about the downside of globalization before it was cool....
50: What Slavoj Žižek Would Say About Poker and the Peso
14 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What does psychoanalytic philosophy tell us about capitalism? In this edition of Odd Lots, we speak to Ole Bjerg, a professor at the Copenhagen Busine...
49: The Man Who Wants to Better Trading by Slowing It
12 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Brad Katsuyama has racked up oceans of newspaper ink since being propelled into the public spotlight as the protagonist of Michael Lewis's book on hig...
48: The Lost History of Financial Market Modernization
03 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How is it that stocks are traded on electronic exchanges in the blink of an eye but bonds still trade over-the-counter by phone and sometimes even by ...
47: Why it's Time to Stop Using the Word 'Disruption'
23 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
"Disruption," "incubation," "innovation"... you hear these words nonstop these days as people talk about the incredible changes taking place in societ...
46: Space Robots Are Helping Hedge Funds Invest
16 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The most valuable commodity for investors is information, and hedge funds and asset managers are going to great lengths to get it -- even to outer spa...
45: Why A Whistleblower Walked Away From Over $8 Million
12 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Could you walk away from a reward of over $8 million? The guest on our latest episode of the Odd Lots podcast did just that. Eric Ben-Artzi was a risk...
44: What a 12-Year Knows About Money That an Economist Doesn't
02 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
"What is money?" This seemingly simple question has the ability to drive people crazy. Is it a unit of account? Is it something about exchange? Does i...
43: Seinfeld Can Teach You Everything You Need About Economics
29 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The hit show Seinfeld is often referred to as the show about nothing, but maybe it's actually a show all about economics. Alan Grant is an associate p...
The Millennial Generation Is Stagnant And Older People Are Part
22 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In developed economies, younger generations have faced stagnant wages, mediocre employment prospects and dizzying costs of homeownership. One culprit:...
41: Billionaires Help Tell the Story of Brazil's Boom and Bust
15 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have been tainted by protests, economic slowdown, and a massive political scandal. In this episode we take ...
40: Why Summer Has Just Gone on Sale
08 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week is the summer edition of Odd Lots and we're talking about the market forces shaping the price of two essential ingredients for any pool part...
39: The Insurance Market for Modern-Day Pirates
29 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week Odd Lots takes to the high seas to discuss how modern-day pirates in the form of illegal fishers are able to take out insurance policies on ...
38: The Fed Made a Massive Mistake Letting Lehman Go
25 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
There's nothing better than financial crisis hindsight and earlier this month we got a big dose of it in the form of a 218-page paper by Laurence Ball...
37: Why We Are Increasingly Divided Into Ideological Bubbles
18 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The result of the U.K.'s Brexit referendum blindsided many and led to acrimonious accusations by supporters on either side of the vote. In the U.S., t...
36: How A Quant Saw Huge Changes That Took Place on Wall Street
11 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Emanuel Derman was one of the pioneers of quantitative finance, having gone from studying physics to working on Wall Street in 1985. His memoir, My Li...
36: How A Quant Saw Huge Changes That Took Place on Wall Street
11 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Emanuel Derman was one of the pioneers of quantitative finance, having gone from studying physics to working on Wall Street in 1985. His memoir, My Li...
35: There Was a Huge Opportunity The Night of the Brexit Vote
01 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In the runup to the Brexit vote polls were mixed. Some showed remain winning. Others showed leave winning. Nonetheless, markets, pundits, and bookmake...
34: The Highway Built by Oil Markets and Political Intrigue
27 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode we take a trip down one particular road on the Gulf peninsula to explore how sudden market shocks — and the political discord...
33: How ``Fed Watching'' Became a Thing
20 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen speaks, the world watches — and one group watches especially closely. ``Fed watchers'' have made a career ou...
32: The Amateur Activists Who Took On The Foreclosure Machine
13 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The Great Recession was characterized by a historic and gigantic wave of foreclosures all around the country. Left and right, people were being remove...
31: Welcome Aboard Starship Bank
06 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
David Hendler made his reputation as a bank analyst at the independent research firm CreditSights Inc., foreseeing many of the problems that led to th...
30: How Finance Took Over the World
27 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. spends 8 percent of its GDP on finance -- twice the amount it did 40 years ago, according to economist Brad DeLong. That figure set off a wav...
29: How an Old-School Chess Shop Survives in Modern New York
23 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
At a time when retail sales are dominated by online behemoths like Amazon Inc. and big chain stores, independent brick-and-mortar shops are under grow...
28: Finance's Hot New Thing Ended Up In An Old-School Scandal
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Peer-to-peer lending was supposed to disrupt the traditional way people borrowed money. Instead of going to some giant, soulless institution, online p...
27: Kentucky Derby Edition: Flip This Horse
04 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
If you're like most people, you only bet on horses once a year, the day of the Kentucky Derby. You might try to cram a little beforehand, bone up abou...
26: How To Make Money By Betting On The U.K.’s Big Referendum
02 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In less than two months, the U.K. will vote on whether to leave the EU in the so-called Brexit referendum. The stakes are potentially massive for the ...
25: Americans Are Miserable, and It's Swaying The Election
25 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
How can you tell whether people in any given country are happy or not? That's the topic we wrestle with on the latest edition of the Odd Lots podcast....
24: Meet The Most Important Country Singer in Economics
15 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Country music lost a legend when Merle Haggard passed away earlier this month at the age of 78. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be much connect...
23: Iceland Jailed Its Bad Bankers But People Are Still Angry
08 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Iceland is known for geothermal beauty, fishing and as the birthplace of Bjork. It also made international headlines in 2008 thanks to a banking crisi...
22: The Unbearable Brightness of Being a Shadow Bank
04 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
A high-flying hedge fund manager lost everything back in 2007 after an accounting scandal prompted investors to pull money from his $12 billion fund. ...
21: The Fraught Life of a Dumpster-Diving U.S. Short-Seller
28 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Short-selling, the practice of betting against stocks by agreeing to sell equities that you don't own, has been in the headlines recently. The share p...
20: The Time NYSE Floor Traders Tried to Prank President Reagan
21 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
For years, the image of a stock market trader was synonymous with images of Testosterone-fueled traders wheeling and dealing on the floor of big excha...
Episode 19: Pow! Pow! El-Erian Talks Central Bank Ammunition
14 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Asset purchases! Currency devaluations! Low interest rates! Negative interest rates! And... more? The world's central banks have unleashed a torrent o...
Episode 18: The Obscure Report That Spawned the ETF Industry
07 Mar 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In 1987, investors watched in horror as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 22 percent in an event that became known as "Black Monday." Months la...
Episode 17: How One Analyst Uncovered a $7 Billion Fraud
29 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In late 2008, as markets tanked thanks the the global financial crisis, two massive Ponzi schemes unraveled. One was the $17.5 billion fraud engineere...
Episode 16: Making Money When Everyone Else is Losing Theirs
22 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Everybody knows by now that a handful of hedge funders made a fortune by betting against housing before the market crashed back in 2008. But, people w...
How a Rural Irish Farmer Became an Expert on the Euro Crisis
16 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In theory, anyone with an internet connection can became an expert on just about anything from just about anywhere. In the latest edition of Odd Lots,...
Episode 14: The World’s Only Stand-Up Economist
08 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
On today’s episode, we’re taking the “dismal” out of the dismal science by interviewing Yoram Bauman, who bills himself as the world’s only ...
Episode 13: How a Professor Won Gambling on an Obscure Sport
01 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 13: Everyone dreams of being able to win almost every time when gambling. Of course, whether it's blackjack, horse betting, poker or the stock...
Episode 12: How a Consultant Foresaw the 2015 Commodities Crash
25 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, co-host Tracy Alloway is joined by Bloomberg Markets reporter Luke Kawa for a journey back in time. As the global elite mingle at the...
Episode 11: How David Bowie Became a Financial Product
19 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
When the world lost David Bowie this month, it lost one of modern music's undisputed geniuses. Less well-known is Bowie's contribution to the financia...
Episode 10: How the World Ended Up With a Boring Banana
11 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we're taking on one of the most fragile commodities markets around. No, it's not oil (though we do get to that later in the program), it's ...
Episode 9: The 2016 Predictions Episode
04 Jan 2016
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- It’s a new year and a new episode of Odd Lots. Co-hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway have re-stoked our proverbial holiday fire, ...
Episode 8: These Were Our Favorite Stories of 2015
28 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- Gather ‘round the Odd Lots fire. Co-hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway have assembled a collection of Bloomberg News reporters an...
Episode 7: How One Woman Tried To Sound Housing Crash Alarm
21 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
The film “The Big Short” has sparked lots of attention about the origins of the financial crisis and the people who saw it coming. While lot of at...
Episode 6: Meet The Man Who Made Millions Trading Mules
14 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
This week we're thinking about what it means to be a trader in today's electronified markets and contrast it with trading in the era of horse and bugg...
Episode 5: 6,000 Years of Interest Rates
07 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- What better way to prepare for what may be the first U.S. rate hike in almost a decade than to tour 6,000 years of interest-rate histor...
Episode 4: Can a Hedge Funder Cut Prescription Drug Costs?
30 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- Hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass has a plan that could cut the high cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. -- and make himself a lot of mon...
Episode 3: The Strange Story Behind the Beanie Babies Bubble
23 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- Two market bubbles stand out from the late 1990s. Technology stocks that were supposed to make everyone a zillionaire. The other: A ser...
Episode 2: Under the Hood of the $8 Trln Corporate Bond Market
16 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- It's definitely big and it might be broken. It's the bond market! The corporate bond market, that is. In the second episode of Odd Lots...
Episode 1: Tom Keene on Mathiness and His Favorite Guitar
06 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal kick off the Odd Lots podcast by interviewing the legendary television and radio host Tom Keene. On To...
The Odd Lots Preview
04 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Episode Zero of the Odd Lots podcast! Every week, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway take you on a not-so random weekly ...