Odd Lots

Short-selling, the practice of betting against stocks by agreeing to sell equities that you don't own, has been in the headlines recently. The share price of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. has fallen nearly 90 percent from its peak since being targeted by prominent short-sellers including Citron Research's Andrew Left and Bronte Capital's John Hempton, while some other types of short-s...

For years, the image of a stock market trader was synonymous with images of Testosterone-fueled traders wheeling and dealing on the floor of big exchanges. But change has swept stock markets in recent years, diminishing their role in everyday trading. Now, the vast majority of stock trades take place through computerized systems, giving rise to huge debate over the dangers and benefits of high-fre...

Asset purchases! Currency devaluations! Low interest rates! Negative interest rates! And... more? The world's central banks have unleashed a torrent of unconventional monetary policy since the 2008 financial crisis, hoping to heal economic wounds and revive markets' animal spirits. Rescuing us from another Great Depression is no longer seen as sufficient. Seven years on, doubts are starting to bui...

In 1987, investors watched in horror as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 22 percent in an event that became known as "Black Monday." Months later, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission published an 840-page report into the incident; in it was buried a seed that would eventually sprout into the $3 trillion market for exchange-traded funds. Eric Balchunas, ETF analyst for Bloomberg, ha...

In late 2008, as markets tanked thanks the the global financial crisis, two massive Ponzi schemes unraveled. One was the $17.5 billion fraud engineered by Bernie Madoff. The other was the smaller but no less interesting one run by R. Allen Stanford, a flamboyant Texan who lived in the small Caribbean island of Antigua and operated a bevy of companies under the Stanford brand. Best known for his in...

Everybody knows by now that a handful of hedge funders made a fortune by betting against housing before the market crashed back in 2008. But, people who bought at the bottom, when everyone else was panicking, also did extremely well. In the latest episode of Odd Lots we speak with Bloomberg Alastair Marsh, who discovered two traders who won big time by buying the most toxic assets in the world dur...

In theory, anyone with an internet connection can became an expert on just about anything from just about anywhere. In the latest edition of Odd Lots, we speak with Lorcan Roche Kelly, a cattle farmer, and former explosives engineer in rural Ireland who decided in the early days of the euro crisis to figure out what the heck was going on with his nation's banks. Lorcan tells the story of how he we...

On today’s episode, we’re taking the “dismal” out of the dismal science by interviewing Yoram Bauman, who bills himself as the world’s only stand-up economist. Join us for a Laffer curve-a-minute romp through the humor of homo economicus. Along the way, we find the upside in the economic assumption that all human beings are selfish jerks and learn what classes would be included in the University o...

Episode 13: Everyone dreams of being able to win almost every time when gambling. Of course, whether it's blackjack, horse betting, poker or the stock market, it's really hard to consistently win. But one professor, armed with advanced mathematical knowledge and computers, was able to beat the system while gambling on the obscure sport of Jai Alai. In this week's Odd Lots podcast, Steven Skiena, w...

On this episode, co-host Tracy Alloway is joined by Bloomberg Markets reporter Luke Kawa for a journey back in time. As the global elite mingle at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, we look back at a WEF gathering five years ago. Back then, the mood was buoyant -- markets had recovered from the 2008 financial crisis and the euro-zone debt crisis had yet to fully unfol...

When the world lost David Bowie this month, it lost one of modern music's undisputed geniuses. Less well-known is Bowie's contribution to the financial world. In this episode of Odd Lots, hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with David Pullman, the banker who worked with Bowie to develop "Bowie Bonds," which paid investors on the cash flow from the artist's song royalties. This episode cov...

This week, we're taking on one of the most fragile commodities markets around. No, it's not oil (though we do get to that later in the program), it's the market for bananas. Dangerously reliant on a single, boring breed of the tropical fruit, banana growers now face a rampant disease that threatens one of the world's biggest food supplies. We talk to Dan Koeppel, author of "Banana: The Fate of the...

(Bloomberg) -- It’s a new year and a new episode of Odd Lots. Co-hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway have re-stoked our proverbial holiday fire, refilled our wine glasses and are ready to continue our conversation with a newly relaxed group of Bloomberg News reporters and editors. This time we’re looking ahead to 2016, making predictions for key markets and finance events during the next 12 mon...

(Bloomberg) -- Gather ‘round the Odd Lots fire. Co-hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway have assembled a collection of Bloomberg News reporters and editors to spread holiday cheer by sharing their favorite market stories and happenings of 2015. We discuss the stock market sell-off of Aug. 24, the fall of Silk Road, drama in the pharmaceuticals industry, how we all survived the first U.S. interes...

The film “The Big Short” has sparked lots of attention about the origins of the financial crisis and the people who saw it coming. While lot of attention is being paid to a few men who made a fortune on the housing collapse, this week Tracy and Joe talk to the editor of the blog “Calculated Risk” about Doris Dungey, an early blogger and whistleblower who tried to warn the world about brewing probl...

This week we're thinking about what it means to be a trader in today's electronified markets and contrast it with trading in the era of horse and buggies. That's right, we're going back in time to talk mule trading and the story of the legendary Ray Lum, who spent years buying and selling livestock all over the U.S. in the early 1900s. William R. Ferris, history professor at the University of Nort...

(Bloomberg) -- What better way to prepare for what may be the first U.S. rate hike in almost a decade than to tour 6,000 years of interest-rate history? This week, Joe and Tracy speak with NYU Stern finance professor Richard Sylla, co-author of A History of U.S. Interest Rates. We start in Babylonia, where Hammurabi codified the relationship between debtors and creditors, and end with zero percent...

(Bloomberg) -- Hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass has a plan that could cut the high cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. -- and make himself a lot of money. The strategy: Take short positions in a number of pharmaceutical companies while also trying to overturn their drug patents in court. Joining hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal to discuss Bass's unusual tactic is Guan Yang, an occasional Bloo...

(Bloomberg) -- Two market bubbles stand out from the late 1990s. Technology stocks that were supposed to make everyone a zillionaire. The other: A series of mass-produced stuffed animals priced at $5 each. Odd Lots hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway speak with Zac Bissonnette, author of "The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute," to figure out exactly what made mil...

(Bloomberg) -- It's definitely big and it might be broken. It's the bond market! The corporate bond market, that is. In the second episode of Odd Lots, hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal talk corporate debt with Chris White, the creator of a Goldman Sachs bond trading platform and a longtime market structure specialist. We learn about the difficulties of shaking up an $8 trillion market that h...

(Bloomberg) -- Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal kick off the Odd Lots podcast by interviewing the legendary television and radio host Tom Keene. On Tom’s mind this week: Fat tail risks, mathiness on Wall Street and how he rediscovered his favorite guitar. And don’t forget Newtonian mechanics and bow ties. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Episode Zero of the Odd Lots podcast! Every week, hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway take you on a not-so random weekly walk through hot topics in markets, finance and economics. In this introduction, Joe and Tracy discuss what you can expect from the show and introduce the guest of the first episode, the legendary Tom Keene. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy in...