Odd Lots

One of the surprising developments in the last year was the boom in SPACs. The so-called blank check companies raised more money in 2020 than they had in the several years prior combined. But why? Why did a year that saw a pandemic and economic devastation turn into such a boon for what has historically been a speculative financing vehicle? On this Odd Lots, we speak with Larry Wieseneck, a longti...

We're in a rare moment where chess is popular in the United States. There are two big factors driving it. One is the smash hit Netflix show "The Queen's Gambit." The other is the rise of Twitch streaming, as gamers play online for thousands of fans. On this episode, we speak with Hikaru Nakamura, a popular chess streamer, about the economics of this new environment for chess. See omnystudio.com/li...

It's been pointed out that, after the Black Death in Europe, real wages surged because there was such a shortage of labor in the aftermath. But what was the structure of the economy that allowed this transfer of power to workers in the first place? On this episode, we speak with Patrick Wyman, historian and the host of the Tides of History podcast, to get the real story of Europe's post-pandemic e...

Economics is all about improving living standards, but rarely does the dismal science deal with social justice or talk about how a lack of it could actually hinder growth. In this episode, UBS Global Chief Economist Paul Donovan discusses how prejudice and labor markets are intertwined, and why discrimination can restrict development. Donovan describes how historical technological advances have of...

2020 has been an absolutely extraordinary year for the economy. In March, we saw the fastest economic contraction in history with an extraordinary surge in unemployment. Now, as the year closes out, we've had a housing boom, an extraordinary rise in financial assets, and unemployment has fallen much faster than most people expected. We spoke about this with Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Gold...

This past summer, the business intelligence software company MicroStrategy made waves when it put some of its extra cash into Bitcoin. Then, as Bitcoin ran up, it bought more, and the stock has now soared thanks to the bet. But what's the reasoning behind the move? We speak with MicroStrategy’s CEO, Michael Saylor, on why he thinks Bitcoin is the best reserve asset for any company. See omnystudio....

We talk a lot about quantitative trading on the podcast, but typically from a rather big picture perspective, and not at the level of actually building the systems needed for trading and data analysis. On this episode, we speak with Camille Fournier, the head of Platform Engineering at Two Sigma, the financial services firm that, among other things, runs a large hedge fund. Fournier, previously th...

On a recent episode of Odd Lots, we talked about Intel, and how the former dominant American semiconductor company was stumbling. But big things are happening in the chip industry beyond the manufacturing woes of one company. As it turns out, we're seeing a dramatic rethink of chip architecture, and what they can do, with more emphasis on specialized semiconductors that are really good at performi...

It's obviously been an extraordinary year for markets and the economy for reasons that don't need stating at this point. But what does 2021 have in store? Can the current trends continue? We talked with two of the smartest macro thinkers we know: Jon Turek, the author of the Cheap Convexity Blog, and Naufal Sanaullah, the Chief Macro Strategist at EIA All Weather Alpha Partners, to discuss the big...

It's no secret that some African nations went on a borrowing spree in recent years, tapping both international markets and sovereign lenders such as China to finance massive infrastructure projects. But all that debt is becoming problematic as the coronavirus crisis strains public finances, resulting in a slow-motion debt crisis. In November, Zambia became the first African country to default on i...

For years, the IMF was generally of the view that free trade was good, and that open capital flows were also good. But in recent years, the latter view has started to change. Increasingly the IMF, while continuing to promote openness, has viewed restricting the capital account for emerging markets as a useful tactical macro tool. On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Prakash Loungani and Srir...

With developed economies still operating well below pre-crisis levels, central banks face substantial pressure to pursue stimulative policies on an ongoing basis. But what more can they do with the tools at hand? And how much do political fights get in the way? On the latest Odd Lots, we speak with Peter Praet, the former Chief Economist at the ECB, who served under Mario Draghi for almost a decad...

For years, Intel has been the pre-eminent U.S. semiconductor company. But lately, the company has stumbled. This past summer, shares in the company plunged after it said it was experiencing delays in the production of its next generation chips. And while most tech companies have been on an absolute tear, Intel is still close to its lowest levels since the March bottom. So what went wrong and what...

There are many similarities between cryptocurrencies and social networks. And the rise of payment apps like Venmo make the link between payments and social media explicit. But this convergence between money and social media goes back a long time. On this episode, we speak with Lana Swartz, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, about her book, New Money: How Payment Became Social...

Traditional quant strategies that try to screen for stocks that are "cheap" have had an extremely rough period. So is this just a temporary setback that will eventually mean revert, or are the existing strategies dead and busted? Earlier this year, Inigo Fraser-Jenkins of Bernstein Research provocatively said he was sticking a fork in the quant world. But not everyone agrees with him that it's a l...

Bitcoin has been on a tear lately, but it's been a bit unclear as to what's driving it. But whatever's driving it, co-host Tracy Alloway has given up her longtime skepticism on the digital currency and now believes in its value. This episode is why. We spoke with Meltem Demirors, the Chief Strategy Officer at CoinShares, a firm that offers vehicles for investing in digital assets, about this year'...

The politics of taxes are always fraught. In theory, everyone wants to pay less of them and bristle at the prospect of paying more. But it turns out that our feelings are more complicated and nuanced. On this episode, we speak with Stefanie Stantcheva, a Harvard economist who has done deep survey work on how people really feel about taxes. What she's discovered could be useful going forward in ter...

Investors have always had to pay attention to what's going on in Washington DC, but this year it's been on a whole new level. Between virus response policy, fiscal stimulus talks, and, of course, the recent election, there's been a huge demand for understanding of politics. On this episode, we speak with Jake Sherman, a reporter from Politico, who argues that investors are badly confused about how...

This year's stock market boom has coincided with a boom in new listings. There have been plenty of IPOs, numerous SPACs, and an uptick in companies doing direct listings on the exchange. That third category has gotten relatively less attention, but it potentially represents a powerful offering from the NYSE, which unlike many other financial companies, has performed quite well. On this episode, we...

Measuring a company's book value is a classic practice among investors seeking to understand how much a firm's actual assets are worth. But what happens when a firm's assets are not things like buildings, factories, and land, but intangible assets, such as intellectual property and brand value? How does that change the task of analyzing a company's intrinsic worth? On this episode, we speak with M...

The IPO of Ant Financial will go down as one of the most extraordinary deals of all time. And in general, Chinese internet companies have been huge winners in the post-crisis period. But what does it take to really analyze the quality of their businesses? On this episode, we speak with Stephen Clapham, a forensic accountant, and the founder of Behind The Balance Sheet , who explains why understand...

The COVID-19 crisis has pushed central banks around the world into uncharted territory. Typically when we talk about this, it's from the perspective of the Fed or the ECB. But this has also been an extraordinary period for emerging market central banks. On this episode, we speak with Ruth Krivoy who ran the Venezuelan central bank in the early 1990s. She discusses the lessons she learned during th...

For months now, traders have been positioning for a major volatility spike around the November election. But what are markets really expecting, and how are investors hedging? On this episode, we speak with Josh Younger, a rate derivatives strategist at JPMorgan to discuss how he goes about finding signal in the market's noise, how traders are positioning, and what could be a shock to the market on...

Central banks around the world are increasingly launching pilot projects to explore the possibility of issuing digital currencies. But how would they work and what would they accomplish? On this episode, we speak with Benoît Cœuré, the head of the BIS Innovation Hub and a former member of the ECB Executive Board. We discuss CBDCs as well as the future of monetary policy more broadly. See omnystudi...

With just two weeks until the election, talks over a stimulus deal remain ongoing, with negotiations having picked up between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Many of the disagreements haven't been about the price tag per se, but around language on such things as a national testing strategy and workplace liability. One of the most outspoken voices on the Democrat s...