Odd Lots

It's really been an extraordinary year for markets and the economy. Stocks are down, particularly, growth stocks which have gotten clobbered. Treasuries are down. Inflation is hotter than it's been in years. For the first time in ages, the Fed is hiking aggressively, having just moved by 50 basis points, with premises to do more. Plus there's a host of other shocks we're experiencing from the ongo...

The aviation industry has never seen a disruption like what it's experienced over the last two years with the pandemic. Air travel ground to a virtual halt initially, but has slowly been climbing out of a hole, with leisure travel in particular starting to boom. So what's next for travelers and carriers? On this episode, we speak with Scott Keyes of ScottsCheapFlights.com about the future of trave...

One of the big themes these days is the return of the 'real' economy. You can't solve problems these days with just money. Not everything can be done by sitting behind a screen. And so some of the most important players in this new environment are the commodity trading shops, which help arrange financing and delivery of oil, coal, natural gas, nickel and everything else you can think of across the...

Shanghai, a city of nearly 30 million people, is currently under a hard lockdown, as the Chinese government sticks to its Covid Zero strategy of limiting the virus at all costs. There have been some shocking images and stories over the past few weeks of frustrated apartment dwellers unable to go outside or get basic necessities. Some of those things have improved somewhat, and now some residents a...

Spring of 2021 was peak meme mania. GameStop was going nuts. AMC was going nuts. And in general, the big cohort of traders that entered the market in early 2020 was riding high. Since then, though, things have turned south. Volumes have dipped significantly. The memes came back to Earth, and a lot of the growth stocks that were riding high have gotten absolutely killed. So where do things stand no...

The price of major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have been moving sideways for awhile. But it doesn't seem like there's any slowdown in terms of money entering the space. Every day, some new fund is being launched or some legacy financial institution is diving into it. But what's all this money going to do? On this episode we speak with Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO and co-founder of FTX...

The long grounding of the cargo ship The Ever Forward has shone a spotlight on the limited dredging equipment that exists in the U.S. The most powerful equipment here has significantly less capacity than what exists in Europe, or in the Suez Canal. What's more, the U.S. can't use foreign equipment due to a law known as the Foreign Dredging Act of 1906, which requires that any dredging done in the...

With oil prices surging, there's a sense of greater urgency about moving more towards electric vehicles. But of course the metals that go into EVs are also expensive. And that goes for the core technology -- lithium ion batteries. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with James Frith, a lithium battery expert and investor at the VC firm Volta Energy Technologies. We discuss the state of the ar...

Goldman's top commodity strategist Jeff Currie was one of the earliest to call that we're in a new commodities supercycle, starting early last year. Well, it's not even close to over. Currie estimates that we're just in the second inning of it. The issue is what Currie characterizes as a "volatility trap" that's keeping investment on the sidelines, despite surging prices of spot commodity prices....

For much of the last two decades, housing has been the consummate macro asset. It was at the heart of a huge boom. Then there was the crash and the Great Financial Crisis. Then there was slow comeback and return to normal. And then amidst the pandemic, housing became insanely hot for a variety of reasons. But now housing is also a micro story, as the housing supply chain -- not a topic many people...

Over the last several years, most economic crises have been solvable by money. Swap lines. Bailouts. Central bank asset purchases, and so on. But now the world is experiencing something new: A problem that money can't easily solve. When it comes to, for example, avoiding Russian energy, there's no simple solution. Money can't buy an instant energy changeover. This is all part of a new regime that...

Most people don't think much about wooden pallets -- and that might be true even of people conducting large-scale military invasions. Recent reports claim that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been hampered by a lack of pallets, making it more difficult to move the vast amounts of supplies needed to support soldiers and tanks. Meanwhile, the disruption of Ukraine's lumber industry could make a glo...

For a long time, bond investing was considered a sleepy backwater. You bought a bond and just clipped coupons as you waited for it mature. Boring! Then Bill Gross discovered that bonds could be traded. He founded Pimco and proceeded to make lots of money from bond investing in sometimes questionable ways. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Matt Levine co-hosts in this special Odd Lots episode with Mary C...

Earlier this year, there was a growing movement among some musicians (lead by Neil Young) to remove music from Spotify as a protest against Joe Rogan. But frustration at the streaming music giant goes back a lot further than that. And it has to do with how royalties are paid, and the lack of transparency about how music gets discovered on the service. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and...

For years 15 years, Hugh Hendry ran the hedge fund Eclectica Asset Management, earning a reputation as a provocative and contrarian thinker on the entire state of the world economy. These days though, he's living in St. Bart's, surfing, and managing luxury properties for the richest people in the world. But of course, he can't stop thinking about macro. On this episode off Odd Lots, Hendry joins T...

In times of uncertainty, people often reach for historical analogies. In recent weeks and months, as inflation has continued to climb and commodity prices spike, there's been a lot of talk of a return to the 1970s. But is that the right parallel? On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak to Macquarie Capital Strategist Viktor Shvets about why we should instead be looking...

When it comes to commodities, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has had a notable impact on the price of oil and natural gas. It's also a huge deal for wheat, and food more broadly. Ukraine is a massive player in the global wheat market, and the planting season is basically right now. What's more, Russia is also a big wheat seller, and Belarus is a big supplier of fertilizer. On this episode of Odd Lot...

It's happened again. Another container ship owned by the Evergreen Maritime Corp. has gotten stuck a year after the Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal and briefly halted the flow of global trade. This time the grounding happened in the Chesapeake Bay and involves the Ever Forward -- a 1000-foot container ship which happens to be carrying the contents of Tracy's entire Hong Kong apartment....

There’s a big question over whether Russia will be able (or willing) to make payments on billions of dollars it’s borrowed from investors given its current situation. Not only does the country have a history of previous major defaults, but some of its outstanding bonds are also structured kind of strangely. On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with Univer...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has kicked off a giant mess in the world of commodities and sent prices surging. Commodities trader Pierre Andurand has made his name from navigating volatile energy markets, correctly positioning for negative prices oil in April 2020. Now, he sees tightness in the energy market staying for some time. On this episode of Odd Lots, he tells Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Allow...

The soaring price of electricity, particularly in Europe, is once again causing a search for alternative sources of power. Obviously there's a lot of interest in wind and solar -- the classic renewables. But due to their intermittency, it's difficult to use them to sustain the power grid without some kind of backup. Enter nuclear power? On this episode of Odd Lots, Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway...

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has set off a new wave of concern about cyber attacks. Indeed, there were already reports of some in the run up to the war—like when hackers reportedly targeted U.S. gas producers. But while worries about cyber attacks have been around for a long time, it remains hard to get a handle on the actual threat. Such attacks aren’t all that visible and information on them is...

Harsh sanctions have been imposed against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. However, the country's energy exports have largely been spared. One significant reason for this is Germany's high dependence on Russian energy, particularly natural gas. So how did Germany wind up in this situation? And why didn't it take steps years ago to start weaning itself off of this dependency? We discuss this wi...

U.S. and E.U. countries have unveiled extraordinarily tough sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. But what effect will they have? Are they tough enough? And will Russia feel a significant amount of pain as long as the sanctions don't include energy? On this episode, we speak with sanctions researcher Edoardo Saravalle about the existing sanctions, their power, what more can be don...

Even prior to Russia's attack on Ukraine, the global economy was facing an extraordinary moment. Now things have become massively more complex. In addition to the attack itself, rich Western governments have unveiled historically powerful sanctions against Russia, most notably by freezing much of the country's FX reserves. So what are the immediate and long term ramifications? On this episode, we...