Odd Lots
Episodes
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 ...