Odd Lots

The Theory That Explains Why Everyone Went Crazy

01 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Does it feel to you like society has gone crazy? Well, you're not alone. There's a general view that all around the world, in the realms of politics, ...

Lots More With Neil Dutta on a Looming Fed Policy Error

28 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Neil Dutta, the top economist over at Renaissance Macro, has generally been sunny and optimistic about the economy over the last four years or so. But...

The American Entrepreneurs Who First Opened The Chinese Market

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From cars to toys to clothes, we're just used to seeing the label "Made In China" on all sorts of things. But how did China become a go-to destination...

Why Tom Lee Thinks We Could See S&P 15,000 by 2030

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The stock market has had a torrid run in 2024 despite the fact that interest rate cuts haven't materialized in the way people had expected at the star...

CoreWeave's CSO on the Business of Building AI Datacenters

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone knows that the AI boom is built upon the voracious consumption of chips (largely sold by Nvidia) and electricity. And while the legacy cloud ...

John Arnold on Why It's So Hard To Build Things in America

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Virtually everyone, across the ideological spectrum, has the view right now that it's too hard to build things (or get things done generally) in Ameri...

Evolving Money: Money Without Borders (Sponsored Content)

18 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout history, financial markets have struggled with the issue of borders. Borders create friction, add cost and cause headaches for anyone who w...

The Big Trade Underneath the Strangely Calm Surface of the S&P 500

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For much of this year, the S&P 500 has marched steadily higher while measures of stock market volatility, like the VIX, have stayed pretty low. Bu...

What a 'Degen' Crypto Trader Really Does All Day

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A few lucky people have made generational wealth trading the ups and downs of the crypto market. And some finance professionals have shifted gears to ...

How Indonesia and China Cornered the Nickel Market

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's been a huge change in the market for nickel, which goes into everything from electric vehicles to steel. Indonesia has grown to absolutely dom...

Elon Musk Dominates Outer Space Like Nobody Has Before

12 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The company that Elon Musk is most known for, obviously, is Tesla. It's been extraordinarily successful and made him one of the richest people in the ...

This Is How the Food Industry Is Preparing For a Post-Ozempic World

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The rise of GLP-1 drugs, like Ozempic, is a potentially existential threat to the makers of salty, sugary, high-calorie snack foods. But it's obvious ...

Lots More with Kyla Scanlon on the Economic Vibes

07 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Kyla Scanlon has a great way of identifying the economic vibes, building up a massive TikTok following with videos about the Federal Reserve, inflatio...

Orsted's Americas CEO on Fixing What Went Wrong in Wind Power

06 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last year was a bad one for the US wind power industry, with lots of cancelled projects, writedowns, and an overall reassessment of how the math behin...

Corporations Learned The Maximum Amount They Can Charge For a Product

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What's the price of a hamburger? Well, it depends. Are you making the purchase on the spot? Did you order ahead using an app? Are you a frequent custo...

Lots More on the Two Troubled NYC Office Buildings Everyone's Talking About

31 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past two weeks, two New York City office buildings have become major talking points in the market for commercial real estate. Troubles at 174...

The Big Problem With the Modern Electricity Grid

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The modern electricity grid is a weird thing. The delivery of electricity is a natural monopoly, for kind of obvious reasons. Despite that, we still a...

Are We Doing Decarbonization Totally the Wrong Way?

29 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cost of solar has been plunging for years. Everyday there's a new headline about growing installation of renewables or batteries, or some other si...

How a Professional Sports Bettor Really Makes Money

27 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The gambling industry in the US has exploded in recent years, and suffused every aspect of sports consumption. You can bet on who will win or lose jus...

Lots More With Luke Kawa on Memestock Mania 2.0

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Remember GameStop? The poster-child for 2021's memestock mania recently surged almost 5x in a matter of days — and it was all catalyzed by a few twe...

How a DOJ Economist Approaches Antitrust in America

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have taken an invigorated approach to antitrust under the Biden administration, targeting c...

Introducing: Big Take Asia

21 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We’re taking The Big Take to Asia. Each week, Bloomberg’s Oanh Ha tells a story from the home of the world's most dynamic economies - and the mark...

How to Succeed at Multi-Strategy Hedge Funds

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Multi-strategy hedge funds are all the rage right now. But there's also a lot of confusion about what exactly they do, and how the the so-called "pod ...

Jeff Currie on Why Copper Is His Highest-Conviction Trade Ever

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Copper has long been touted as a big winner from the world's drive towards electrification. All those electric vehicles and new grids need lots of the...

Pierre Andurand Says the World Could Run Out of Cocoa Inventories

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pierre Andurand made his name trading oil and other energy-related assets, but wild swings in the price of cocoa have recently lured the founder of An...

Viktor Shvets on How the Fed Has Become a Prisoner of Its Own Making

13 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we'll get fresh inflation data in the US, which will inevitably feed into the Federal Reserve's future decisions to raise, hold or lower be...

Lots More With Brad Setser on the Yen, a New China Shock and Excavators

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's a lot going on in currency markets and global trade at the moment. The Japanese yen has been falling, even after authorities seemed to interve...

Hugh Hendry on the "Terrifying" Yen Move, and Risk of "Mad Max" Deflation

09 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Hugh Hendry says the world is brimming with risks right now, from Chinese deflation, to the strength of the US dollar, to unrealized losses in US Trea...

What a Fed President Hears When He Goes on the Road

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Federal Reserve has a lot of official statistics it can look at to try and gauge the state of the overall economy. But there's also room for incor...

Lots More on How CHIPS Act Money Got Awarded

03 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS Act, which set aside tens of billions of dollars in loans and grants in order to encourage companies to build new s...

Luis von Ahn Explains How Computers and Humans Learn From Each Other

02 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Breakthroughs in generative AI have created enormous opportunities for humans to learn from computers. We can use them to explain the news, understand...

The Ultra Wealthy Have Their Own Separate World of Real Estate

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the past, the most expensive housing in any major city would be connected in some way to the economics of the city itself. If the general market wa...

An Ex-CIA Officer Explains How to Spot a Lie in Business

26 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When most investors think of due diligence, they think of sifting through years of financial statements and crunching numbers to better understand a c...

Here's Who's Winning the Global Fight for AI Talent

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

 AI is all the rage right now. There are billions of dollars now flowing into the space, with large and small companies all competing to create the n...

Josh Wolfe: The ChatGPT of Robotics is Coming

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last year or so, probably every venture capitalist has become interested in artificial intelligence. So people are still figuring out what ty...

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin On Getting Inflation Under Control

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

At the end of 2023, there was a lot of optimism that the US economy was on that glide path to a soft landing. But at least in the first quarter of thi...

What AMLO's Legacy Means For Mexico's Upcoming Election

19 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On June 2, 2024, Mexicans will go to the polls to elect a successor to current President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. His chosen successor, former M...

How The American Workforce Got Hooked on Adderall

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Over the last few years, users of the popular ADHD drug Adderall have been frustrated by regular shortages in getting their prescriptions filled. Vari...

How Electric Utilities Will Handle Booming AI Datacenter Demand

15 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For years and years, utilities in the US haven't seen much growth in electricity demand. The economy is generally mature and has been able to grow eve...

Introducing Money Stuff: The Podcast

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The audio companion to Bloomberg Opinion’s beloved Money Stuff column hosted by its author Matt Levine, “whose deadpan style mixes technical eluci...

Lots More on America's Electrical Components Crisis

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 2021 and 2022, the US economy experienced historic shortages of many different goods. All kinds of consumer, construction, and high-tech components...

Tractor Supply's CEO on How It Escaped the Post-Pandemic Curse

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

 A bunch of companies saw their share prices boom during the pandemic. Peloton surged because no one could go to gyms. Zoom jumped because no one cou...

Why a Former Freight Broker Is Making a Major Bet on Mexico

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

US imports from Mexico are surging. Former President Trump's tariffs on China, as well as the renegotiated USMCA treaty, have encouraged supply chains...

Steve Eisman on the Three Big Macro Stories of Our Time

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Steve Eisman became a famous name in the investing world due to his prescient bet against the US housing market before 2008, which led to his starring...

Why Savita Subramanian Thinks Stocks Can Keep Going Higher

04 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Savita Subramanian, head of US equity strategy at Bank of America, raised her outlook for stocks at the end of last year, there was a lot of skep...

Why the CRE Urban Doom Loop May Still Be Coming

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to the collapse in office real estate, there's a lot of focus on who owns the debt, and what kind of pain must eventually be realized by...

Lots More on the Parabolic Surge in Cocoa Prices

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cost of cocoa beans has surged to a record $10,000 per metric ton. That's expected to make chocolate more expensive for millions of confectionary ...

The Mega Corporations That Control What Americans Eat

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Walk into a grocery store today and there are seemingly endless shelves of product to choose from. But behind all those different options are a handfu...

Sal Mercogliano on the Baltimore Bridge Collapse

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On March 26th, a massive container ship called the Dali ploughed into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, a major overpass just outside the city's p...

Listen Now: The Big Take

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Big Take from Bloomberg News brings you inside what’s shaping the world's economies with the smartest and most informed business reporters aroun...

The Economist Who Believes AI Will Be Great for the Middle Class

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

AI is an incredibly exciting space, provoking both great wonder and fear. One of the big worries obviously is: What will happen to everyone's job? Wil...

Lots More on the Big Can Kick in Commercial Real Estate

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, we spoke with Rich Hill, head of real estate strategy and research at Cohen & Steers, about where stress was building in the $20 trilli...

Why Home Insurance Markets in California and Florida Imploded

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, we've seen home insurance premiums soar by historic amounts. Not only have prices gone up, but in some instances, we've seen national...

How the US Dollar Became an International Weapon of War

18 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the US took a number of extraordinary steps to cut Moscow out of the international financial system. The country i...

Why the UAE Is Pumping $35 Billion Into Egypt

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The United Arab Emirates recently unveiled a stunning $35 billion investment in Egypt, snapping up development rights in an area on the Mediterranean ...

Industrial Policy and the Forgotten Side of Alexander Hamilton

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Thanks to the blockbuster musical, Alexander Hamilton has become a modern cultural icon. He's known as an architect of the federal system, building ou...

Why We're Now Living in The Golden Age of Snack Food

14 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Want some Doritos? For years, you might have only been able to get one or two snack chip flavors. But right now on Amazon, you can find numerous varie...

Moderna's CFO on How to Allocate Capital in Big Pharma

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The pharmaceutical space is characterized by extreme uncertainty. You never know what drugs are going to pan out. The lead time for development is ext...

Lots More on Why Japanese Stocks Are Surging

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Japanese stocks are suddenly soaring, with the Nikkei 225 hitting an all-time high this week after decades of languishing. Warren Buffett has been upp...

Celsius CEO Explains How They Win in Energy Drinks

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Go to any deli or 7-Eleven these days and you're sure to see a gigantic, technicolor wall of beverages. There are juices and sodas and CBD-infused bev...

Introducing: The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Deal, hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, features intimate conversations with business titans, sports champions and game-changing entrepren...

Anat Admati on How to Never Bail Out Banks Again

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We're coming up to the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which sparked a fresh conversation about the role of banks in the ...

How to Put a Price on a Bird: the Forgotten Science of Economic Ornithology

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This episode is for the birds — and one bird in particular. Flaco, an Eurasian eagle-owl, escaped from the Central Park Zoo last year and went on to...

What Really Goes Into the Fed's Favorite Measure of Inflation?

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Federal Reserve has a goal of getting inflation down to 2%. But of course, there are a lot of different ways of measuring inflation. Many people k...

How the Rise of 'Pod Shops' Is Reshaping the Way Markets Trade

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

 The hedge fund industry has gone through multiple evolutions. Investing styles go in and out of fashion as market conditions change. Strategies that...

How Ukraine Delivers the Mail During Wartime

23 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If you order something from Ukraine right now, be it a T-shirt or a vintage Christmas ornament, chances are it will arrive on time and in good shape. ...

A Longtime Aerospace Analyst Questions Boeing's Future

22 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Troubles at Boeing just keep piling up, along with existential questions about the company's future. Not only is Boeing enormously important to US man...

This Is What's Hard About Building a US Domestic Battery Industry

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The growth of electric vehicles has heightened concerns about China's current dominance in lithium-ion batteries. So as part of the Inflation Reductio...

Lots More on What Earnings Are Telling Us About Prices Now

16 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, Corbu managing director Samuel Rines came on Odd Lots to discuss what exactly companies were saying about why they were raising prices. His...

The Quiet Revolution in How We Rescue Banks

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A little less than a year ago, the US financial system was rocked by its first major banking drama since 2008. While the crisis was eventually contain...

How a Second Trump Administration Could Upend US-China Relations

12 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

 Back in 2016, Donald Trump campaigned on a platform that included a much harsher stance toward trade with China, and the US-China Trade War was a bi...

How Surging US Oil Output Is Being Moved and Stored

09 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

US oil production has surged to an all-time record of more than 13 million barrels produced per day. But where's all that crude actually going? And ho...

NY Community Bancorp's Problems in the Rent-Stabilized Market

08 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The last week saw a major plunge in shares of New York Community Bancorp after the company revealed challenges in its lending to multi-family resident...

How Businesses Decide Exactly Where to Set Up Shop

05 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We know that companies think carefully about where they open stores. They might look at things like how many people pass by the location on a day-to-d...

Lots More on Why Farmers Across Europe Are Furious

02 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland, we've seen a wave of protests recently from angry farmers. So what's driving the activity? On this ep...

How Global Shippers Are Dealing With a Worsening Red Sea Crisis

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Attacks on ships in the Red Sea continue to escalate. What started with narrow strikes by Yemeni-based Houthi militants against Israel-linked vessels ...

Mark Cabana on the Fed, QT and Treasury Funding

31 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's a busy week for the bond market with a meeting of the Federal Reserve and the release of the US Treasury's quarterly refunding statement. While a...

Big Take DC: Economists May Be Using Bad Data to Make Big Decisions

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode is a special edition of Bloomberg's Big Take DC podcast, featuring an interview with our own Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway. They sp...

Lots More with Claudia Sahm

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This week on Lots More, we speak with Claudia Sahm, the former Federal Reserve economist and founder of Sahm Consulting, about the recent uptick in th...

Why the Short Volatility Trade Is Back and Bigger Than Ever

29 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There are plenty of one-off risks at the moment, but it seems like betting on pretty much nothing happening is more popular than ever. Investors are i...

Lots More on China's Moves to Create a Dollar Alternative

26 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For years, people have been talking about the end of US dollar dominance or how some other currency could usurp its role around the world. But when it...

The Anonymous Meme Account Chronicling Credit Market Craziness

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The past few years have been pretty wild for anyone working in credit, the business of selling and trading corporate debt. First you had the pandemic,...

Brevan Howard's Top Economist Sees Three Huge Macro Turning Points Under Way

22 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Right now, there's a lot of hope and optimism that the US economy is on a path towards a soft landing. Nonetheless, there are aspects of the current l...

The Moment That Boeing's Culture Started To Rot

19 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On Jan. 5, the plug door of an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 blew out mid-flight, forcing the plane into an emergency landings with a large hole in fusela...

US Oil Is Booming and It's Upending Global Markets

18 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2010s, US shale players were producing oil like crazy, with no concerns about profitability. Then the legs were kicked out from the indus...

The Massive Economic Impact If China Invades Taiwan

15 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan has become a top-of-mind concern in defense and corporate circles in recent years. But what would such an attack...

Lots More on What's Hot at JPM's Health Conference

12 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For anyone interested in investing in the health-care space, JPMorgan's annual Health Care Conference has become one of the most important events of t...

Harley Bassman on Why the Big Moves in the Bond Market Are Done

11 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Harley Bassman, a.k.a. the Convexity Maven, is a legend among bond investors. He worked at Merrill Lynch, where he invented the MOVE Index that measur...

Lael Brainard on What Still Can Be Done to Lower Prices

09 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The mood about the US economy feels very different right now than it did a year ago. At the start of 2023, almost everyone seemed to be predicting rec...

This Is the Impact of Billions Flowing Into Private Credit

08 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Private credit is now so big that it's rivaling more traditional forms of lending and fueling a debate about whether this relatively new asset class p...

Attacks in the Red Sea Are Reconfiguring Global Trade Again

04 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A string of recent attacks by Yemen-based Houthi rebels on commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea to the Suez Canal have forced global shippers to ...

The Top 10 Things We Learned on Odd Lots in 2023

01 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's no secret that one of the fun things about Odd Lots is that it covers a lot of different topics, from the plumbing of the financial system to cri...

Brad Jacobs Plans to Make Billions in the Building Supply Industry

28 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Brad Jacobs has founded multiple multi-billion dollar companies in his career. He turned United Waste into part of a major trash collection conglomera...

The Odd Lots AMA Episode: Joe and Tracy Answer Your Questions

25 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, our listeners called in with their questions. They ranged from the personal, like "What happened with Tracy's coal?" to the editorial...

Why So Many People Got This Year's Economy Wrong

21 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This time last year, almost everyone was predicting a recession would engulf the US economy in 2023. One of those forecasters was was Anna Wong, chief...

Introducing: Bloomberg News Now

19 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Bloomberg News Now is a comprehensive audio report on today's top stories. Listen for the latest news, whenever you want it, covering global business ...

A County in Maryland Came up With a New Way of Building Affordable Homes

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When people think of publicly funded housing, they tend not to think about modern-looking apartments with all kinds of amenities. But a county in Mary...

Lots More on Shohei Ohtani's $700 Million Contract

15 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week was a huge one for the soft landing camp. The inflation data came in cool and the Federal Reserve indicated its confidence that it can begin...

How Salad Chain Sweetgreen Figures Out Its Next Product to Sell

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sweetgreen, the popular fast food salad restaurant, recently announced that it was eliminating all use of seed oils, in favor of higher quality oils s...

Drybar Founder Alli Webb on the High Cost of Fast Growth

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One of the defining brands of the 2010s was Drybar. The popular chain of blow dry salons helped define the so-called experience economy, leading to nu...