Odd Lots
Episodes
This Is How They Could Literally Mint a Trillion Dollar Coin
01 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Craig Fuller on the Huge Challenge of Getting the Ports To Operate 24/7
28 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In recent weeks, the White House has attempted to make a greater effort to improve the functioning of supply chains. One effort includes getting the P...
Dan Alpert on the Big Difference Between Now and the 1970s
25 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Official inflation measures in the U.S. remain elevated and so, of course, this has a lot of people thinking about the 1970s. Not only was this the la...
Axie Infinity, the Crypto Game That’s Grown Over 200x This Year Alone
21 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bitcoin just hit an all-time high and crypto mania is in full swing. One of this year's big winners has to be Axie Infinity, a blockchain-based game, ...
Goldman’s Jeff Currie: It’s a Commodities Supercycle, and We Still Haven’t Hit Max Pain
18 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Back in January, we spoke with Jeff Currie, the Global Head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs. At the time, he was bullish on the commodities c...
Ryan Petersen on How Global Supply Chains Have Gotten Even Worse
14 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've been covering global supply chain pressures almost since the beginning of the year on Odd Lots. And with each episode the question is "ok, so wh...
Michael Pettis on What Evergrande Means for China’s Macro Economy
11 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The implosion of Evergrande continues. And nobody knows exactly how the losses will be distributed. What will be the impact on creditors or people who...
Introducing: Breakthrough
08 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
On Breakthrough, a new series from the Prognosis podcast, we explore how the pandemic is changing our understanding of healthcare and medicine. We sta...
Here Are the Biggest Problems Facing the Fed Right Now
07 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Federal Reserve has a lot on its plate at the moment. Not only are "transitory" inflation pressures proving to be more stubborn than expected, but...
This Is How the Trillion Dollar Coin Could End Debt Ceiling Fights for Good
04 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Every few years, people are reminded of the weird law the United States has: the debt ceiling. Congress has to vote affirmatively to raise the total o...
Isabella Weber on China’s Vision for Making Markets Work
30 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For years, people have talked about China's ongoing process of opening up, or liberalizing its economy. And yet lately it's taken strong moves that se...
This Is What the Pandemic Did to the U.S. Rail System
27 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The pandemic has obviously sent shockwaves throughout the supply chain. And, despite hopes of normalization, things might even be getting worse. The n...
How To Understand the Inflation We’re Seeing Right Now
23 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last several months, inflation has risen at a pace significantly faster than what economists have expected. Markets, and perhaps the Fed, tak...
Understanding Evergrande, the Chinese Real Estate Conglomerate That’s Nearing Collapse
20 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you've been following the wild ride that is Chinese real estate, then you've definitely heard of Evergrande. The price of its shares and bonds has ...
Stacy Rasgon on How the Global Chip Crisis May Be Getting Even Worse
16 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've been talking about chips on Odd Lots for almost a year now. Thanks to a unique combination of events and constraints, capacity to make more semi...
Dan Wang Explains What China's Tech Crackdown Is Really All About
13 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last several months, Chinese authorities have undertaken a sweeping campaign of change. We've seen crackdowns on big tech and fintech compani...
Zoltan Pozsar on What’s Going on in Rates Markets Right Now
09 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot happening in the plumbing of the financial system. The Federal Reserve's reverse repo facility has seen huge takeup from financial marke...
Patrick O'Shaughnessy on the Next Big Thing in Passive Investing
06 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Passive investing is kind of boring. You dump your money in an index fund and that's it. The industry hasn't really seen big innovation since ETFs wer...
Omair Sharif Explains How Inflation Measures Really Work
02 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When people think about what inflation is, they might first think about some broad index like the CPI. What does the the CPI really tell us? And how i...
How Solana and Pyth Aim To Take DeFi to the Next Level
30 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's obviously a lot of interest in crypto and DeFi these days. And while it's growing rapidly, it's still not cutting much into traditional financ...
Mitu Gulati and Ugo Panizza on Haiti’s Odious Post-Colonial Debt
26 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly 200 years ago, the colonialist French power granted independence to Haiti. But it did so under the brutal condition that it pay 150 million fra...
A Conversation With Ajmal Ahmady, Afghanistan’s Former Central Bank Chief
23 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last week and a half, the world has watched in shock at the dizzying speed of the collapse in Afghanistan. Events are still unfolding, so the...
David Woo on What the Economists Got Wrong About the Stimulus
19 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
David Woo has always been one of the most outspoken voices on the street. A former top strategist at Bank of America, he is now publishing independent...
Neel Kashkari on the Fed’s Quest To Get To Full Employment
16 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The last two jobs reports have been strong, but the unemployment rate remains over 5%. And by some estimates, the economy is still 8 million jobs shy ...
Brent Donnelly on What It Takes To Be a Winning Trader
12 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The last 18 months has seen an incredible influx of people getting into trading. Thanks to a combination of Robinhood, a bull market, and perhaps more...
Dallas Fed President Rob Kaplan on the Economy and Monetary Policy Right Now
09 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The economy is in uncharted territory in more ways that one right now. Coming out of the worst of the pandemic, we're seeing a rapid pace of GDP growt...
Sam Bankman-Fried and Matt Levine on How the Crypto Market Really Works
05 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Bankman-Fried is arguably the most important and powerful person in crypto. His crypto exchange FTX just raised $900 million and is growing like c...
Gene Seroka on the Logistical Logjam at the Port of LA
02 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
America's ports are a key source of congestion contributing to supply chain disruptions rippling through the economy. Things have gotten a little bett...
The Bathtub Episode: How the Pandemic Disrupted Plumbing
29 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about building a new home, obviously you think of various constraints regarding land, labor, and raw materials. But, of course, you can...
GXO's CIO on the Past, Present, and Future of Warehouses
26 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You can't talk about supply chains without talking about warehouses. Basically everything we buy at some point eventually sits in a warehouse. But war...
What Complexity Economics Can Add to Our View of the World
22 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past year it's become clear that traditional economics doesn't necessarily do a great job of accounting for real world problems like transpor...
Why Everyone's Experience Of Inflation Is So Different
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Inflation is running hot these days. But, even when the official measures were considerably cooler, there were many people who were skeptical and insi...
Vlad Zamfir on the Dangers of Unstoppable Software and What People Get Wrong About Blockchains
15 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Vlad Zamfir is something of a crypto legend. The researcher was early into Bitcoin, and he was part of the Ethereum Foundation before it launched. He'...
The Labor Episode: How the Omni Hotel Chain Is Dealing With Hiring Right Now
12 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the big stories in the economy right now is the high number of unfilled job openings in the leisure and hospitality sectors. There are numerous...
Steve Keen Says Economists Get Everything Wrong (Especially About Climate Change)
08 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mainstream economics has come under attack lately. People have begun questioning its understanding of things like inflation, monetary policy, deficits...
Ryan Holiday on Opening a Bookstore During a Pandemic
05 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bookstores typically aren't seen as the most attractive businesses in the year 2021. Add in the pandemic, and that makes it even tougher. And if you'r...
This Is the Vision for DeFi Built on Bitcoin
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot of hype about so-called DeFi (decentralized finance) these days, and much of it is based on enthusiasm over what can be built on Ethereu...
Tom Schmidt Explains What You Need to Know about DeFi
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By now you've no doubt heard about DeFi: the hot vision of crypto that aims to disrupt traditional lending and fundraising. But the space remains real...
Hyun Song Shin on CBDCs and the Future of Central Banking
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The world's central bankers are facing challenges the likes of which they've never seen before. We're in a unique moment for the macroeconomy, coming ...
The Trucking Episode: Why the Industry Is Such a Mess
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You can't talk about the problems in logistics and supply chains right now without talking about trucking. Once goods are unloaded from ships, trucks ...
Why Ram Parameswaran Says the World's Biggest Tech Stocks Are Ridiculously Cheap Right Now
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows that tech stocks performed amazingly well amid the coronavirus crisis. In the last few months, there's been a little bit of a cooling o...
Why Tracy Can't Ship a Teddy Bear from Hong Kong to the U.S. Right Now
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By this point, you're aware that shipping anything internationally is pretty tough right now. It turns out, it's getting worse. Earlier in the year, T...
Why Brooklyn Nets Star Spencer Dinwiddie Co-Founded a Crypto Startup
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last year, numerous celebrities and athletes have gotten into crypto in some way. For example, some have announced plans to put part of their...
This Is How the U.S. Ran Out of Homes for Sale
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Home demand is booming. By some measures, the market is even hotter than it was during the peak prior to the financial crisis. But there's one big pro...
Dan Ariely on How To Win Big by Betting on Human Capital
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Ariely is one of the most famous behavioral economists in the world. And in his latest act, he's attempted to apply his research to investing. His...
Roshun Patel on What Really Happened During the Crypto Market Crash
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The crypto market recently experienced one of its worst crashes ever, with numerous coins cut in half in a manner of days, seemingly without an obviou...
Data Centers, Crypto Miners, and Gamers Are All Battling for Semiconductors
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
These days, there's a shortage of chips everywhere you look. Some of it is related to idiosyncratic events specifically related to logistics. Some of ...
Daniela Gabor on the Critical Case Against Private Sector ESG
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last few years, ESG has become a gigantic industry. Due to concerns over climate, the treatment of workers, and other public matters, there's...
Aaron Lammer on Yield Farming and Trading in the World of DeFi
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Decentralized Finance," "Yield farming"... you've probably heard these terms before, but have very little idea about how they all work. On a recent e...
How the World's Companies Wound Up in a Deepening Supply Chain Nightmare
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By now, everybody knows that global supply chains are a mess. Not a day goes by where there isn't news of some shortage or bottleneck. Chips, shipping...
Jared Bernstein on Taxes, Spending, and Why President Biden Wants to 'Pay for It'
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jared Bernstein has been a longtime advisor to President Joe Biden. He was his advisor while Biden was Vice President, and today he serves on the Coun...
A Special Announcement From Joe and Tracy
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Please check out this special announcement from Joe and Tracy, who have an update on a new Odd Lots initiative, involving a new blog, show transcripts...
Viktor Shvets on Inflation and How Crypto Could Cause the Next Financial Crisis
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What will the economy really look like when things normalize? Lots of people are, of course, anticipating a sustained rise in inflation, even beyond t...
Hayden Adams Explains Uniswap and the Rise of DeFi
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's an irony with crypto. While so much of it is ostensibly about circumventing legacy finance, many of the most important pieces of crypto infras...
How to Make the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Boom Again
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This year, everyone's become aware of the hollowing out of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing capacity. Whether it's the rise of TSMC, the stumbles at I...
What Adam Tooze Learned About the World Last Year
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's probably nobody better at synthesizing massive events like Columbia professor Adam Tooze. His book Crashed, which came out in 2018, was probab...
Why the Price of Lumber Has Soared Day After Day After Day
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's not often that lumber becomes a national obsession. But this year it has. Thanks to a combination of factors, including diminished sawmill capaci...
How to Build a Portfolio That Outperforms For a Century
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a huge question mark at the moment about whether markets are at some sort of important turning point. For instance, we've seen big amounts of ...
John Hempton on Greensill, Archegos and What It's Like To Short Right Now
19 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's a weird moment for the markets. The big stock indices are near all time highs. And yet there have been some high profile meltdowns and blowups. T...
Zach Carter on the Real Story of Weimar Hyperinflation
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever the government is engaging in fiscal or monetary expansion, people like to invoke the history of Weimar Germany and how soon we might all go ...
Slavoj Žižek on GameStop, WallStreetBets, and the Future of Capitalism
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When GameStop shares skyrocketed earlier this year, numerous pundits were quick to ascribe political significance to the whole thing. Was it a rebelli...
Why Treasury Market Spasms That Shouldn't Happen Keep Happening
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. Treasury market is the biggest, most liquid market in the world. Its smooth functioning is also crucial to the economy and the financial syst...
Why the True Price of a Bond Can Still Be Hard To Know
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the modern age, we expect to be able to turn on our computers, enter in a ticker, and know the actual price of a financial instrument, such as a st...
The Ex-Jane Street Trader Who's Building a Multi-Billion Crypto Empire
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The crypto market has come a long way in recent years. But it's still far less efficient than your typical established market. To understand more abou...
How Gigantic Ships Are Creating Global Supply Chain Havoc
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ever Given has been freed from the Suez Canal. But the whole situation was indicative of a broader issue in global supply chains: increasingly lar...
Virtu CEO Doug Cifu Explains Payment for Order Flow and the Future of HFT
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the GameStop and Robinhood story exploded at the end of January, suddenly everyone took an interest in market structure and things like payment f...
Josh Younger on the Soaring Cost of Climate Change and Understanding the SLR
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the connection between the big trend in interest rates over the last several years and the cost of climate change mitigation? This is a questi...
Luke Kawa on the Macro Situation Right Now
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last several weeks, we've seen major developments in the macro situation. The vaccine rollout has accelerated. We've gotten a stimulus. The e...
Stephanie Kelton on How MMT Won the Fiscal Policy Debate
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a sense, Modern Monetary Theory has won. This is not because policy measures are necessarily in line with what MMT adherents would prescribe. Rathe...
Did We Just Experience a Break in the Neoliberal Consensus?
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, the dominant economic philosophy of the United States has been that fiscal policy should be relatively inert, and that the Fed should be ...
Introducing: Doubt
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A few decades ago, nobody really questioned vaccines. They were viewed as a standard part of staying healthy and safe. Today, the number of people que...
Michael Pettis on Persistent Imbalances in Post-Pandemic China
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By some measures, the Chinese economy did better in 2020 than just about anywhere else. For one thing, it actually grew last year. Also because of the...
Why Music Back Catalogs Have Become a Red-Hot Asset Class
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Dylan did it last year. Shakira did it in January. More and more famous musicians are selling off the rights to their back catalogs to investors. ...
Coming Soon: The Pay Check Season 3
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than 150 years after the end of slavery in the U.S., the net worth of a typical white family is nearly six times greater than that of the average...
Zoltan Pozsar on What Just Happened with the Treasury Market
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Treasury market just experienced what some might call a tantrum. Across the yield curve, we saw rates shoot up. And it's not even clear why it hap...
Howard Lindzon Tells Us Why He Launched His Own SPAC
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
SPACs, sometimes referred to as blank check companies, are incredibly hot. After being a sort of sleepy and sometimes sketchy backwater of the finance...
How Chinese Buying Is Causing a Boom in Agricultural Commodities
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are lots of hot areas in the market, which everybody knows. Stocks are obviously hot, as are industrial commodities like copper. Agricultural co...
This Is How the World Ended up with a Shortage of Semiconductors
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The world is facing a chip shortage. Numerous companies, including the auto sector, are facing an inability to get semiconductors, hampering their abi...
A Value Manager on How Most Value Managers Are Getting It All Wrong
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As you might have heard, so-called value investing has not had a good run. At least from a quantitative standpoint, strategies that aim to buy low-val...
How Boring Food and Beverage Companies Turn into Huge Stock Winners Year after Year
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the worst of the pandemic, people loaded up on staples from their grocery store. Shelf-stable food items, beverages, canned tuna, canned soup, ...
How Monster Beverage Shares Soared a Monster 100,000% in the Last 20 Years
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about the big winners in the stock market over the past couple of decades, you might think about Amazon or Apple or some other tech win...
ARK's Head of Research on How They Find the Next Huge Winner
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a world dominated by passive investing on one end and retail YOLO traders on the other, there aren't many star fund managers these days. There's on...
Mike Novogratz's Vision for Rebuilding Finance with Crypto
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bitcoin, and crypto more broadly, have been on a huge tear lately. Then, with the chaos surrounding GameStop, there's been more discussion about wheth...
Goldman's Jeff Currie on the Silver Squeeze and the Coming Boom in Commodities
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a weird several days in the market. What started with a short squeeze in GameStop, driven by Reddit traders, somehow morphed into a huge sur...
Benn Eifert Explains How Retail Trading Is Rocking Markets like Never Before
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We know that retail activity, much of it on Robinhood, has been surging since last spring once the lockdowns began. But just how big of an impact is i...
Is The GameStop Trade Really A Political Rebellion?
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The GameStop short squeeze is one of the most extraordinary events to ever happen in markets. But does it have political significance? Some are saying...
Can Open-Source Semiconductors Upend the Chip Industry?
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're seeing historic change happening in real time in the chip industry. The old leaders are going away, and new players and new models are emerging,...
How One Online Investor Made the Score of a Lifetime on GameStop
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone is talking about GameStop. The physical games retailer that was left for dead has been one of the hottest stocks of the year, surging well ov...
Dan Wang on China's Mission to Be a World Leader in Semiconductors
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've been talking a lot on the podcast about semiconductors. The stumble of Intel. The general troubles with US manufacturing, and, of course, the ri...
The Story of How TSMC Came to Dominate the World
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In every conversation about computer chips, it always comes back to the dominant player: TSMC. Founded in the 1980s, it's far and away the biggest and...
The Important Lesson a Quant Manager Learned in 2020
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It goes without saying that 2020 was a year like no other when it comes to the markets. A historic crash, and then a raging recovery, all set against ...
Why the Cost of Shipping Goods From China Is Suddenly Soaring
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus crisis snarled global shipping in early 2020 as borders were closed, but lots of people expected it to improve as vessels returned to ...
How the U.S. Lost Chip Dominance and How It Can Be Regained
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. was once a manufacturing leader in semiconductors. That's no longer the case, given the rise of contract manufacturing and outsourcing, the d...
Cowen's Co-President on Why SPACs Are Having Such a Moment
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the surprising developments in the last year was the boom in SPACs. The so-called blank check companies raised more money in 2020 than they had...
Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura on Twitch Streaming and “The Queen's Gambit”
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're in a rare moment where chess is popular in the United States. There are two big factors driving it. One is the smash hit Netflix show "The Queen...
What Happened to Europe's Economy After the Black Death
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been pointed out that, after the Black Death in Europe, real wages surged because there was such a shortage of labor in the aftermath. But what w...
This Is How Prejudice Can Hinder the Economy
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Economics is all about improving living standards, but rarely does the dismal science deal with social justice or talk about how a lack of it could ac...
Goldman's Jan Hatzius on the Lessons Learned in 2020
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
2020 has been an absolutely extraordinary year for the economy. In March, we saw the fastest economic contraction in history with an extraordinary sur...
Michael Saylor, the CEO Who Turned a Software Company Into a Bitcoin Company
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This past summer, the business intelligence software company MicroStrategy made waves when it put some of its extra cash into Bitcoin. Then, as Bitcoi...
Camille Fournier on Building Tech at Two Sigma
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We talk a lot about quantitative trading on the podcast, but typically from a rather big picture perspective, and not at the level of actually buildin...