Odd Lots

There's a lot of discussion these days about de-dollarization and whether the US dollar will lose its standing as the world's sole reserve currency. Generally, people seem open to the idea, but they also don't see many good alternatives out there. The renminbi is the obvious candidate to take share away from the dollar, given the size of the Chinese economy and China's role in global trade. But fo...

A couple of years ago, it was an amazing time to have a truck or be a trucker. The goods economy was absolutely booming. Prices were booming. Supply chains were broken. Everyone wanted access to more freight. Fast forward to spring 2023 and the situation couldn't be more different. Prices have collapsed and the environment is now as bad for carriers as it was during 2019, which was a horrible year...

We're still in the middle of a "crypto winter" with the price of coins well off their highs from back in 2021. But debates over how to regulate them are heating up, with significant disagreements among US politicians and agency chiefs. At the recent ISDA Annual General Meeting, we sat down with CFTC Chief Rostin Behnam to talk about his view on crypto rules and more. Among the things we discussed...

Terry Duffy is the chairman and CEO of CME Group, the world's biggest derivatives exchange and a trading behemoth whose name is synonymous with Chicago's financial industry. In this wide-ranging interview, Duffy talks about the big risks in the market he's seeing right now and how the CME is preparing for them. He discusses everything from complaints over a lack of liquidity in Treasury futures, t...

Coming soon: When nerdy gamer Sam Bankman-Fried rocketed to fame as the world’s richest 29-year-old, he pledged to donate his billions to good causes. But then his crypto exchange FTX collapsed Billions of dollars were missing, and Sam was in handcuffs. Those who knew him were left wondering — who was Sam really? A well-meaning billionaire who made a mistake? Or a calculating con man? From Wondery...

The 2010s saw the rise of a number of digital media startups like BuzzFeed News, Gawker Media, Vice, Business Insider and others who were set to usher in a new era of news consumption, displacing legacy outlets like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Now, by and large, that dream seems to have died. Gawker is gone. BuzzFeed News is closed. Vice has filed for bankruptcy. Insider recent...

The Federal Reserve has hiked rates rapidly over the last 18 months, and yet inflation remains surprisingly high. Perhaps what's most surprising is that even in the most rate sensitive area of the economy -- housing -- the surge in mortgage rates hasn't had a significant cooling effect. Prices have barely budged and even the homebuilders have been booming again after a brief dip in late 2022. So w...

Nobody knows for sure who is going to make all the money when it comes to artificial intelligence. Will it be the incumbent tech giants? Will it be startups? What will the business models look like? It's all up in the air. One thing is clear though — AI requires a lot of computing power and that means demand for semiconductors. Right now, Nvidia has been a huge winner in the space, with their chip...

Disruptions caused by the pandemic have revealed deep flaws in our supply chain for physical goods. Certain market failures that have been left to fester for years were suddenly exposed. But some parts of the economy were broken long before the pandemic, particularly anything having to do with care work. Various forms of childcare, daycare, eldercare and healthcare have seen costs explode, with se...

Some supply chain crises are acute. A bottleneck at the ports. A shortage of semiconductors. These can get fixed, to some extent, with concerted policy choices. But other crises are slower moving and don't have one easy fix. In the coming years, the bourbon supply chain could be under threat, due to a shortage of the specific type of wood used in the barrels made for aging the liquor. On this epis...

There's been a lot of discussion about the possibility of "de-dollarization," or the idea that the world could move away from using the dollar as the de facto global reserve currency. Some of this desire makes sense. Not only has the Federal Reserve been hiking rates at the fastest pace in decades, which puts economic pressure on other countries through links to the dollar and US trade, but sancti...

The big headlines from March's banking crisis have receded and balances at some of the Federal Reserve's emergency lending facilities, like the discount window, are starting to fall. But if you look closely, there are still signs of strain in the depths of the financial system. And of course, there are still plenty of worries about whether deposit outflows from banks will lead to a broader credit...

Marijuana has been legalized in a number of places in the US now, but what New York is trying to do with its legal weed market is somewhat unique. Not only is the state trying to use legalized weed to raise tax revenue and create a new industry with lots of new jobs, it’s also trying to use its legalized cannabis market to rectify some of the wrongs of the past. In the third and final episode of t...

In some respects, selling legalized cannabis should be like many other consumer goods business. You make a product people recognize and then sell it to as many of them as possible. But even if attitudes towards pot -- and the laws that govern it -- are changing in the US, there are still a ton of issues facing this new market. In the second episode of this three-part Odd Lots series, we take a clo...

New York City has long been seen as a holy grail for the legal weed industry, with millions of potential customers. And last year New York state started handing out licenses for its first recreational cannabis shops, the culmination of a series of moves that have seen marijuana decriminalized after decades of being illegal. So how is this new legal weed market supposed to work in a city with a lon...

Over time, we expect the world to get richer. Yes, there are disruptions and setbacks (and we have seen several large ones in the last few years) but the expectation is to see growth and an increase in material wealth. And yet for years, many countries around the world have seen stagnation or outright reversal — particularly once you exclude East Asia. On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with He...

In August of last year, the White House signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, a bipartisan effort to bring more advanced semiconductor manufacturing onto US shores. Of course, it already has plenty of critics. There are concerns that the bill is being larded up with red tape, or non-core progressive priorities, that will undermine the bill. On this episode, we speak to two leaders playing key...

In the last month or so, two macro risks have become top of mind for investors. One is the stability of regional banks. The other is the weakness in the commercial real estate market. On some level, they're separate stories, but they're also linked, since regional banks tend to do more commercial real estate lending than larger, national banks. Of course, the links are complicated. CRE is not a mo...

Nassim Taleb has never been shy about expressing his viewpoints on a wide range of topics. But lately he's been getting into verbal tussles with people who have long looked up to his wisdom. Whether it's Bitcoiners, venture capitalists, deadlifters, or anti-vaxxers, many people within these communities have admired his philosophy of antifragility. So why has he taken to arguing with them on Twitte...

For the most part, being a landlord, particularly in a major city, has been a good business to be in. Rents historically just go up — as do property prices. And there are multiple other ways to make money, as well. Plus, historically, politicians didn’t care much about the rights of renters, focusing much more on the concerns of homeowners. But the politics might be changing. And if the politics a...

One of the big mysteries in markets right now is why risk assets rallied so strongly into the new year even as policymakers were adamant that they would continue to go hard on inflation by raising rates. Sure, there have been some recent signs of a "soft" or even "no landing" scenario, but a lot of the price action seemed pretty dramatic, with investors dashing back to meme and tech stocks that we...

The tech world is in a precarious moment. Valuations are down. The IPO window seems shut. SPACs are a thing of the past. And the industry's pre-eminent bank just went bust. So what now? Where are the opportunities and what should people look for? On this episode, we speak with Betsy Cohen, the veteran dealmaker, SPAC innovator, and the co-founder and chairman of investment firm Cohen Circle. We di...

When Silicon Valley Bank failed, the government stepped in and guaranteed that all accounts — even those well above the FDIC threshold for deposit insurance — would be made whole. So now people are wondering whether all accounts at every bank are implicitly guaranteed, regardless of their size. But if they are, then what is the point of private, for-profit retail banking? On this episode of the po...

Markets are suddenly on edge due to strains in the financial system. But banks aren't the only source of stress. Pockets of the commercial real estate market — which is worth around $20 trillion — are showing cracks as well. Higher interest rates are one factor, but also a lot of commercial office space is still not at pre-Covid capacity levels, putting pressure on income. So where are the trouble...

Zero- and one-day options give investors the ability to bet on the daily moves of the S&P 500. In recent months, both big institutional investors and retail traders have gotten in on the action, creating a boom in trading volumes of these short-lived contracts and sparking an intense debate over their effect on the market. So what exactly is driving their popularity and why are some Wall Stree...