Odd Lots

Inflation is too high, and the Federal Reserve has started on an aggressive hiking path in order to tame it. But will these hikes really accomplish anything? After all, the Fed can't print more oil or housing. So what is the central bank's real goal here? On this episode we speak with Edward Harrison, a senior reporter on the Bloomberg markets team, and the author of the 'The Everything Risk' news...

Bridgewater's Greg Jensen on Why Markets Have Further to FallInflation is at its highest in four decades and the Federal Reserve is raising rates at the fastest pace since 2000. Inflation and a slowing economy are a toxic mix for markets, and in recent days we've seen both stocks and bonds hit hard. So how do you actually invest in this type of macro environment, or model big themes like supply ch...

We continue to see an explosion of interest and money flowing into the crypto/blockchain space. But recent price declines and the Terra disaster have raised new questions about what the whole point is. So ... what is the whole point? What is crypto good for? To get a better understanding of the state of the technology and the market, we speak with Arthur Breitman, the co-founder of the Tezos block...

For years, economists of the MMT school have been arguing that the way we think about deficits and government spending is all wrong. Whereas many people warn about the unsustainability of the national debt -- likening it to a household credit card bill -- the MMT view is that real resources are the constraint on government spending, and that inflation is the sign that real resources are being stre...

The collapse of the Terra ecosystem, and the tokens Luna and UST, will go down as one of the most painful and devastating chapters in crypto history. Over $60 billion market value has evaporated, and numerous retail investors are nursing major losses. What's particularly bad is that this was a big project, championed by some of the most notable names in crypto. But some people obviously saw it com...

The first true meme stock was GameStop, which went wild in early 2021, delivering brutal losses to short sellers, and a fortune to a handful of independent retail investors who participated in the squeeze. The episode shined a bright light on the WallStreetBets subreddit and the power of social media in disseminating trade ideas. One investor who did well was Rod Alzmann, who had been long GameSto...

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...