Odd Lots

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 salary into Bitcoin. But Brooklyn Nets star Spencer Dinwiddie has been in the space for a lot longer, having held Bitcoin for several years. And, in addition to owning Bitcoin and other coins, he's also the co-founder of a new company called Calaxy,...

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 problem: There just aren't many homes available to buy. Whether it's existing inventory or new home sales, there simply isn't enough to meet the demand, even with prices surging. On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with housing economist Ali Wolf, the...

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 five-year-old firm Irrational Capital searches out companies that foster human capital: that companies which do a better job of nurturing their employees see stock market outperformance. In this episode, we talk about why human capital matters, how...

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 obvious catalyst. So what really happened during the selloff? Who was behind it? And what role did crypto market structure play in the intensity of the decline? We speak with Roshun Patel, the VP of lending at the crypto prime brokerage Genesis, who explai...

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 it is related to production challenges relating to long, pre-existing trends. And other aspects are simply related to the fierce battle for chips among a range of players. On this episode, we speak with Brian Venturo, the CTO of CoreWeave, a cloud se...

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 been a huge influx of money into investments that take into account environmental, social, and governance considerations. But is there a dark side? On the latest episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Daniela Gabor, a professor of Economics and Macro-Fi...

"Decentralized Finance," "Yield farming"... you've probably heard these terms before, but have very little idea about how they all work. On a recent episode , we spoke with one of the creators of the largest decentralized crypto exchange, UniSwap. But what's it like to trade this stuff? On this episode, we speak with Aaron Lammer — the host of the new podcast Exit Scam — who's recently been DeFi-p...

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 containers, lumber, you name it. So how did it happen and how does it get unwound? On the latest episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Ryan Petersen, the CEO of Flexport, which makes software to help companies manage their supply chains. He breaks down...

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 Council of Economic Advisors. On the latest Odd Lots, he joins us to talk about the current state of the economy, inflation, and, more importantly, the White House's vision for taxing and spending. In particular, he explains President Biden's philosophy...

What will the economy really look like when things normalize? Lots of people are, of course, anticipating a sustained rise in inflation, even beyond this burst in prices right now. Our guest this week is skeptical. We speak about the new landscape with Viktor Shvets, a Managing Director at Macquarie, on why he doesn't see the disinflationary trends changing anytime soon. He also argues that the ne...

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 infrastructure are centralized financial entities. For example, the newly public Coinbase holds fiat currency and is subject to numerous regulations. Enter decentralized exchanges. A new breed of trading venues has been built to enable trading directly upo...

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 Intel, or the inability of car companies to acquire much-needed chips, semiconductors are becoming a major political issue. But how can you actually turn things around? What would the right policy mix look like? On this episode, we speak with Alex Wil...

There's probably nobody better at synthesizing massive events like Columbia professor Adam Tooze. His book Crashed , which came out in 2018, was probably the definitive take on the Great Financial Crisis. Later this year he has another book coming out on the Coronavirus crisis, and the political and economic lessons therein. On this Odd Lots, we speak with him about the extraordinary year, what it...

It's not often that lumber becomes a national obsession. But this year it has. Thanks to a combination of factors, including diminished sawmill capacity, a renovation boom, and then a homebuilding boom, the price of finished wood has soared to never-before-seen heights. On this episode, we speak with Stinson Dean, a lumber trader at Deacon Trading, to explain why the market has gone so wild, and h...

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 fiscal stimulus in the U.S., sparking concerns that inflation might finally return and overturn a decades-long bull run in bonds. So how can investors protect against that scenario and other major inflection points in markets? On this episode of Odd...

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. There was the collapse of the vendor financing firm Greensill. And there was the wipeout of the Bill Hwang fortune. Meanwhile, numerous SPACs and other speculative stocks have been getting clobbered. So we talked to short seller John Hempton, the CIO...

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 around transporting dollars in wheelbarrows. But what really happened with Weimar and how did it come about? On this episode, we speak with Zach Carter, the author of the best-selling book “The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John M...

When GameStop shares skyrocketed earlier this year, numerous pundits were quick to ascribe political significance to the whole thing. Was it a rebellion? Was it class warfare in the spirit of Occupy Wall Street? On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who argues that the episode was significant and radical, but not in the way most people appreciate. We al...

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 system. Yet it keeps experiencing bizarre, seemingly inexplicable bouts of volatility. We saw it in February. We saw it big time last March. And we saw it multiple times in recent years before then. On this episode, we speak with Yesha Yadav, a professor...

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 stock or a bond. But this is easier said than done, especially with bonds, and especially with bonds that are infrequently traded. Sometimes, in fact, bond pricing is a matter of opinion. At least that's the contention of Maciej Kowara and Eric Jacobso...

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 about crypto market structure, we spoke with Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam is a former international ETF trader at the prop shop Jane Street Capital. Now he's building a crypto empire with his hedge fund Alameda Research as well as his own exchange called FTX....

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 large ships are contributing to logistical bottlenecks. This was true long before the latest issue on the Suez. On the latest episode of Odd Lots, we speak with economist and historian Marc Levinson, the author of the book The Box , to discuss the rise...

When the GameStop and Robinhood story exploded at the end of January, suddenly everyone took an interest in market structure and things like payment for order flow, as well as the role that high-frequency trading shops play in enabling free retail trading. This, of course, gave rise to lots of conspiracy theories about ways retail traders are taken advantage of. On the new Odd Lots, we speak with...

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 question that's been analyzed by Josh Younger, a rates derivative strategist at JPMorgan. On the latest episode of Odd Lots, he discusses his work on interest rates and the cost of fighting climate change. We also discuss the significance of the Fed's SLR...

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 economic outlook has improved. And rates have risen across the curve significantly. So what does the macro picture look like right now, and what is the best framework for thinking through things? On this episode, we speak with Luke Kawa, an Asset Allo...