Odd Lots

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 there's now plenty to keep investors busy, including fears of a trade war and signs that the economy be nearing the end of its cycle. On this week's episode of the podcast, we speak with Peter Borish, a veteran investor and trader (and former Odd Lots gu...

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 Treasury auctions. But the government borrowing money isn't like a household borrowing money, and analogies between the two can be misleading. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Brian Romanchuk, the author of BondEconomics.com and a long tim...

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, photo sharing apps, or anything else. But how do the ads get delivered to your desktop or phone? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Afsheen Bigdeli, an engineer who works on online ad platforms about how every time you see an ad it's the r...

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 management on Wall Street and there's a particular model that's become pervasive among big investors and banks -- so-called Value-at-Risk (VaR) models seek to gauge how much a portfolio might gain or lose based on historic price movements. On this wee...

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 of the Chicago Board of Trade. The rant is credited by some as having helped galvanize the Tea Party movement, which rapidly became highly influential within the Republican party. Standing next to Santelli was a floor trader, Eric Wilkinson, who joine...

Longtime market analyst Ed Yardeni came up with the term "Bond Vigilantes" to describe the way bond market participants can punish governments who run economically irresponsible policies. When Yardeni used it in the 80s, it referred to US fiscal policy that was thought to be inflationary. Now the bond vigilantes are back, but this time they're in Italy. On this week's podcast, Yardeni explains the...

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 into a tasty snack. But obviously cocoa trading is a huge business. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to professor Kristy Leissle, the author of the book “Cocoa,” about how this commodity market really works. She explains to us where it's grown...

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 Madness,” teams of quants and traders would stay out all night competing to figure out some of the world's hardest puzzles. This year, the event was held for the first time in London, where Odd Lots joined a team from Goldman Sachs to compete for the p...

The recent trade tensions between the Trump administration and China has shone a light on the country's ambitions to become a technology powerhouse, as one of the complaints is that China unfairly extracts intellectual property from multinationals entering that market. But what, specifically, is China's long-term plan? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Dan Wang, a technology analyst at...

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 thing. Greg King, CEO of Rex Shares LLC, was one of the latter. Like the Winklevoss twins, he set out to create an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that would allow people to invest in Bitcoin in a new way. But many years later, the U.S. securities watchdog...

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 every dollar a man makes. Launching May 9, the Pay Check is an in-depth investigation into what that 20 percent difference looks like. In this miniseries we'll show you how the gender pay gap plays out in real life. We'll hear from Lily Ledbetter, Mo’Nique,...

Everybody probably has some vague idea of what the paparazzi do. They ride around on motorcycles, hounding celebrities, and hopefully snapping photos of them in embarrassing situations. But how do the business and economics really work? How do the photographers actually get paid? Eddie van der Walt, a Bloomberg reporter who once was a paparazzo, joins us on this week’s Odd Lots to help answer thos...

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 Papadopoulos, who in addition to his day job has been betting on horses for a long time. In our discussion, he talked about great gambling scores, where brilliant bettors and cheaters took down gigantic purses by finding ways to beat the odds. He also gave...

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. Millennials are always killing off this or that product or service. But what if the consumption lens is the totally wrong way to talk about this generation? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Malcolm Harris, the author of "Kids These Days:...

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By now, everyone's heard of ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) where companies issue their own currency-like tokens. They boomed massively in 2017, alongside the whole cryptocurrency craze. But very few people really get what they are, and how they fit into the regulatory landscape. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Peter van Valkenburgh, the director of research at Coin Center, who explai...

Recent threats to impose tariffs on Chinese goods, coupled with China's own retaliatory announcements have raised the prospects of a trade war between the world's two biggest economies. But what is a trade war, and what would be the economic ramifications if there were one? Brad Setser, the Steven A. Tananbaum senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins us...

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 implemented. The economist Miles Kimball has lost weight using a different approach. He's increased his fat intake and gone for long stretches of time without eating anything at all. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, Kimball, a prolific blogger and prof...

Remember LIBOR? The London Interbank Offered Rate measures the cost of money when banks borrow from each other. It famously blew out during the financial crisis, but for a long time since then it's been dormant. Only lately it's started to creep higher again. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we talk to Scott Peng, the founder, CEO and CIO of Advocate Capital Management, who warned in early 2008 th...

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 based on algorithmic signals. Of course if you imagine a trader a few decades ago, you think of someone in a big open pit shouting loudly and writing things down on actual physical pieces of paper. So what was that scene really like? On this week's Odd...

For years, nobody seemed particularly concerned about inflation. Outside of a few blips, in the wake of the financial crisis, people have become accustomed to low inflation, and central banks providing ample stimulus to the economy. But suddenly that's changing. There seem to be hints that the macro backdrop is shifting, and that has investors on edge. So why the shift and what's going on? On this...

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 how our brains work, there are often things that we prioritize above the truth (such as fitting in with some tribal identity). On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with NYU professor Jay Van Bavel, about a new paper he co-authored titled "The P...

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 next week.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Kim Phillips-Fein, historian and author of "Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics." She walks us through what happened then, and what lessons it holds for fiscal politics today.    See omny...

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 exceptionally tranquil, and trades predicated on that tranquility continuing have made a fortune. But two of the most popular vehicles for making that trade, XIV and SVXY got obliterated in one day in early February. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots po...