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Odd Lots

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Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. Join the conversation every Monday, Thursday, and Friday

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Yesterday · 41 min
What Wall Street Really Thinks About the AI Trade Now
It has been a big week for the AI trade — we've seen wobbles in the market, many of them in response to headlines like the Anthropic S-1 and earnings from the hyperscalers (Oracle, Microsoft, etc.). So what does Wall Street make of all the news, and how are they processing an increasing sense that the laws of the economy barely apply to AI? Today, we speak with Alexander 'Alty' Altmann, global head of equities tactical strategies at Barclays, and he helps us make sense of how Wall Street really feels about the AI trade right now. We also talk about the KOSPI-fication of the S&P 500, if there are any historical precedents for the capex going into the AI buildout, and if AI is really immune to interest rates. Read More: Microsoft Reports Rising Cloud Sales That Show Payoff From AI Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Monday · 50 min
AI Agents Are Already Changing the Price of Goods
It's obvious that things are getting more expensive, and there are plenty of reasons behind the surge in prices — whether it's wars or inflation or companies padding their profit margins. But with the release of AI agents like Meta's Muse, tech companies are promising consumers that agents will start saving them tons of money by finding the best deals. According to today's guest, Lindsay Owens, the history of price gouging does not bode well for claims that things might get cheaper because of new technology, and research conducted by her think tank Groundwork Collaborative shows that a number of consumer facing agents end up serving customers more expensive items after learning more about their financial situation. Her new book Gouged: The End of a Fair Price — and What That Means for Your Wallet gets into the history of how companies got away with charging more for their goods, through means like data collection and surveillance. Today we talk to Owens about how AI agents are already changing the idea of a fair price, all the pre-AI ways that companies price gouged, and her new book. Read more: Uber Wins Bid to Dismiss £250 Million Black Cab Driver Suit Ryanair CEO Predicts Historic Jump in Air Fares Next Year Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Saturday · 48 min
How a Chicago Restaurant Has Stayed Open For Nearly Three Decades
Richard Mott's first foray into hospitality was in the 1980s at the University of Chicago, where he started running a coffee shop in the basement of the business school when he was a grad student. By the time he graduated, he helped grow that single coffee shop into four locations across campus. He's a longtime Chicago-based restaurateur and his farm-to-table restaurant North Pond has been around since the late 1990s. Lately, he's expanded his business to include Spark Shared Kitchen, a catering facility and incubator for food entrepreneurs. He knows a lot about the practical economics of restaurants and hospitality at large, and in his decades-long career in the Chicago scene he's seen about everything. On our recent trip to Chicago, we sat down with Mott to talk about the ever-increasing price of food and labor, why diners are drinking less, and the expected and unexpected reasons that restaurants so often fail. Read more: Chicago Seeks to Borrow for Police Settlements, Revive Head Tax Chipotle’s Softening Sales Force Analyst to Throw in the Towel Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 23 · 43 min
The Forgotten Godmother of Economic Literature
In 1776, the field of economics was born with the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And among the book's earliest readers, and most ardent advocates, was a Regency-era novelist named Maria Edgeworth. In her time, Edgeworth was one of the most famous literary figures in England, and she smuggled into her stories economic concepts and debates around rent seeking, the idea of productive labor, and so on. These works were enormously influential and they helped expose a generation to practical applications of Smith's new theories. Yet when you read about the history of economics, Edgeworth's name is hardly ever mentioned. Jeanna Smialek, a veteran reporter and the Brussels bureau chief at The New York Times, thinks Edgeworth's name needs to be placed back in the pantheon of economic history. On this episode, we speak with Smialek about her biography, The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth, and we discuss Edgeworth's friendly debates with the likes of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, how the Irish potato famine reshaped economic thought, and how Edgeworth used the novel form to educate the masses on the value of economics. Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Sign up at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 22 · 53 min
Bhaskar Sunkara Thinks the Market Has a Place Under Socialism
In September, Gallup released a poll that showed that 43% percent of Americans viewed socialism positively, the highest approval since Gallup began the poll back in 2010. Since Zohran Mamdani won the NYC mayoral election, the left has made a number of gains across national politics. Still, the majority of Americans view socialism negatively, according to Gallup. As a longtime DSA member and veteran of leftist media, Bhaskar Sunkara is one of socialism's leading advocates, and he's spent much of his career charting what a socialist economy in America might look like. Unlike some other leftists, he believes the market has a place. In fact, he thinks markets and entrepreneurs are an objective good in society. He proposes a vision of so-called "market socialism" in his recent co-authored book The Blueprint, and he lays out this system for us in today's episode. We talk about how many features of capitalism — from small businesses to monetary policy — might be remade under socialist principles. Read more: Ocasio-Cortez Boosts El-Sayed and 2028 Talk With $1 Million Check An Economist Makes the Case for Mamdani-Style Populism Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 21 · 37 min
James Robinson on What It Looks Like When a State is Failing
The third and last episode from our Chicago live show is with James Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago and a recipient of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics (which he shared with Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson). His most famous work is 2012's Why Nations Fail, and in that book he and his co-author Acemoglu document the institutional factors — whether it is reliably run elections or open markets that help facilitate innovation — that determine why some states thrive and others don't. So we ask Robinson the big question: What would have to happen for the US to be considered a failed state? Read More: ‘Middle Powers’ Grapple With New Survival Strategies Under Trump Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 20 · 29 min
CME's Terry Duffy on the Disconcerting State of Finance Regulation
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission was practically brand new when Terry Duffy started working at CME Gropu almost five decades ago, and over the course of his career at the exchange, this legend of the trading world has seen an enormous amount of change when it comes to finance regulation, including the rise of prediction markets, 24/7 trading and perpetual futures. Duffy is set to transition out of his current position as CEO next year, and this conversation, recorded live at City Winery in Chicago, is a sort of exit interview. He tells us how regulation has evolved since the start of his time at the CME. We also talk about why he is against perps, the credibility issues prediction markets face, his definition of spreads versus futures, and what he wishes he knew at the start of his career, now that he is nearing retirement. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 19 · 26 min
Don Wilson on the GPU Market's Trillion Dollar Question
When we spoke to Don Wilson, founder and CEO of DRW, in Chicago last year, he told us he wanted to build a market for GPUs that would eventually be bigger than oil. A year's time in the age of AI is an eternity, and so for the first episode of this year's Chicago live show - recorded at City Winery - Wilson joins us on stage again to talk about what's changed and what hasn't in his quest to help build this market. We get his take on the recent tech selloff, including credit concerns around neocloud CoreWeave. And we also discuss how DRW is developing a “crunch spread” (the GPU version of a crack spread), the latest on his plans to launch GPU futures, and the possibility of token futures too. Read more: Jump, DRW Bet on New Compute Market as AI Boom Faces Scrutiny Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 17 · 1 hr
David Byrne Explains How Forgotten Ideas Come Back to Life
History is littered with ideas that have been tossed aside, only for them to gain relevance at some later date. Think of Moby-Dick: forgotten in Melville's time, but now regarded as the great American novel. Or the work of economist Hyman Minsky, which became influential a decade after his death, when the 2008 financial crisis made “the Minsky Moment” a mainstream term. These are just a couple of the things we talk about with the legendary musician David Byrne on today's podcast. Byrne's new book, Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up, looks to categorize numerous “sleeping beauties” - ideas that were lost but then rediscovered. Besides Melville and Minsky, we also talk about the lost Roman recipe for concrete and we get into Byrne's thoughts on how to write a song and his own experience of having his music rediscovered by a new generation. Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox, plus unlimited access to the site and app. bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 16 · 47 min
The French Political Crisis That's Turning Into a Debt Crisis
Just about everyone is worried about what is going on in France right now: the country's public finances are in sorry shape and there are fears that the French bond selloff, and the country's growing debt crisis, might spillover into the rest of Europe. On top of that, the 2027 elections have investors worried: The two leading candidates, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, aren't seen to be up to the task of taming France's fiscal turmoil. Shahin Vallée was an advisor to Emmanuel Macron when he was an economic minister and during his first presidential election campaign. Since then, he's paid close attention to the situation in France — he is currently a senior fellow at the German Council of Foreign Relations and he advises institutional investors — and he understands, better than most, what went wrong during Macron's nine years in office. Today, he speaks to us about the origins of the current French debt crisis, how similar it is to the challenges Greece faced during the first euro crisis, and why the 2027 elections are making an unstable situation even worse. Read more: Market for Funding Bonds in France Shows Crisis Is Way Off Bank of France Survey Shows Sharp Jump in Business Uncertainty Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 15 · 58 min
Jeff Yan's Plan to Bring the Entire Financial Industry Onto Hyperliquid
Traders and market watchers around the world started talking about a crypto platform called Hyperliquid earlier this year, when speculators used markets built on top of it to trade crude oil after war broke out in Iran. What Hyperliquid allowed for was a 24/7 market on the blockchain. Then in August, President Trump said the CFTC was working on bringing “Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” Hyperliquid currently operates outside the US, but that hasn't stopped it from growing prodigiously in the last year. Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, joins us today to explain how exactly the platform works: He walks us through the protocol he and his co-founders built, the ecology of actors and assets that are tied to Hyperliquid (like the platform's cryptocurrency HYPE), how perps are bought and sold on the platform, he explains what a blockchain oracle is, and he discusses what has to happen for Hyperliquid to start operating in the US. Read more: Strategy’s Saylor Sees Bitcoin Moving Back Up Beyond $100,000 A $90 Million Spyware Hack Sparks Review of Crypto Wallet Sales Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 12 · 1 hr 16 min
Nate Soares on How AI Really Could Kill Us All
Since the Hugging Face incident, concerns over AI doomsday scenarios has entered the mainstream. But of course, some people have been warning about this for years, long before LLMs or ChatGPT. In their 2025 book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, Nate Soares and Eliezer Yudkowsky spelled out their vision of humanity's inevitable demise once superintelligent AI is built. In this episode, we speak with Soares, who serves as president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, about why he believes it's impossible to "align" superintelligent AI, and how exactly the technology can and will go rogue as it gets more and more advanced. Read more: Anthropic IPO Investors Struggle to Put a Price on Rogue AI Risk AI Bubble Risks Worst S&P 500 Crash Since 2008, Strategist Says Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 9 · 1 hr
How AI Is Upending the World of Mathematics
Last month, OpenAI announced that it had produced an AI-generated proof for the Navier-Stokes problem, one of the most famous unsolved questions in mathematics. LLMs used to be bad at counting, but now they are solving math problems that have stumped humans for decades. Meanwhile, at universities, the problem of AI in education continues: Now that LLMs can do a student's homework, teachers are struggling to keep up. It is clear that AI is very quickly changing how math is taught and how it is practiced by professionals. On this episode, Justin Solomon, who is the associate dean for engineering education at MIT, gives us a primer on how mathematicians (both pure and applied) are responding to all the advances in AI. He also explains what exactly the Navier-Stokes problem is and why the OpenAI proof is hard for even the pros to parse, what movies get wrong about how mathematicians do their jobs, and how he's changing his pedagogical approach in the age of AI. See Odd Lots live in Chicago! Tickets on sale here See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 8 · 52 min
What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Economic Problems in Europe
In so many conversations, there's a widespread view that Europe is falling behind. Or it's in trouble. It has been two years since the publication of the Draghi report and the problems the report identified about European competitiveness are far from solved: Demographic challenges, rising energy costs, and a lagging tech sector still cast a shadow over Europe. But according to the economist and policy analyst Dominik Leusder (who also writes the Leusder of Last Resort Substack) the Draghi report might have mismeasured the true scale of Europe's issues, and he asks if the popular narrative of European decline is an accurate one. We also speak about whether Europe needs a frontier AI model, why long, wine-soaked lunches are not a good way to measure productivity, and the state of Europe's vexed relationship with China as a trade partner and competitor. Read more: EU Plans Import Cap on Chinese Hybrid Cars to Protect Sector Alibaba’s Joe Tsai Says Open Source Is Europe’s Best Shot at AI Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 5 · 50 min
Why Treasuries Are 'Risky' Again
We all know that US Treasury yields have been surging, alongside bond yields all around the world. So what explains the selloff and does this mean that bonds are becoming fundamentally riskier? What happens if investors can no longer hedge stocks with government debt? And how do expectations of the Federal Reserve's "reaction function" fit in? In this episode, we speak with Carolin Pflueger, associate professor at the University of Chicago and a resident scholar at the Chicago Fed Bank, about her work on the bond market and central banks. We discuss why bonds have become more stock-like, what that means for yields, and the role of the Fed's credibility in making bonds “bond-like” again. See Odd Lots Live in Chicago! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 2 · 53 min
How Airlines Actually Hedge Higher Fuel Prices
Fuel is a huge expense for airlines, and even on a good day, jet fuel prices are pretty volatile. Throw in two major wars now effecting energy infrastructure, and fuel prices across the board are higher and higher. Airlines have long tried to manage this expense through fuel hedging, using things like swaps and options to hedge against future increases in the price of jet fuel. David Kang, former group treasurer at Qatar Airways, has firsthand experience hedging for a large carrier, and he tells us exactly how it all works. He also explains why airlines use heating oil as a proxy for jet fuel, how much they can make by raising ticket prices and fuel surcharges, and why airlines and oil refineries aren't so different. Read more: War Exposes the Cost of the West’s Retreat From Oil Refining JPMorgan and Goldman See Mideast Oil Flows Near Pre-War Levels Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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October 1 · 44 min
Everything in Markets Is Now Moving Incredibly Fast
The market is acting in ways that make it very hard to get a handle on what exactly is going on right now. The overall indices are surging, while many individual stocks are doing badly. Rates are rising, but the economy is still robust. There's capex spending and the AI trade. There's the war in Iran. And of course there's persistent inflation and the Federal Reserve's ongoing tightening cycle. On this episode, we speak with our former Bloomberg News colleague Luke Kawa, who is now head of markets at Sherwood News. We go over all the big market themes, and he explains why the one consistent theme of this moment is the sheer speed of the moves and the pace of the news itself. See Odd Lots Live in Chicago! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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September 28 · 21 min
Why Building a Crosswalk in LA Is Kafkaesque
Bill McBride did not just predict the 2008 housing bubble, he helped invent financial blogging with his Calculated Risk newsletter. Zach Lasry, meanwhile, is much newer to the scene, but in his career as a real estate developer, he is already responsible for building one of LA's hottest new neighborhoods — Melrose Hill. We spoke to both of them at our live show at the Vermont Hollywood, for a wide-ranging panel discussion on LA real estate. We talk about the difficulty of sourcing construction components, the Kafkaesque process of getting a crosswalk built in LA, and how self-driving cars might help reshape the city and solve its longstanding issues with parking. Read more: Mortgage Rates at 7% Are Forcing Home Sellers to Slash Prices AI Data Centers Release Heat, Posing New Problem for Cities Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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September 25 · 32 min
Hollywood Was Cooked Before AI, and Now It's Only Getting Worse
Is Hollywood just screwed? Writers are earning less. There are fewer shoots taking place in Los Angeles. And people are freaked out about AI. But according to Hayes Davenport, things were starting to feel bad in Hollywood before chatbots showed up to the scene. Davenport — who’s written for shows like Family Guy and is now creative director of LA Material and the co-host of the fantastic Hollywood Handbook podcast — joined us on stage at the Vermont to give us a history lesson on Hollywood's steady decline from the pandemic to now. We also get into the changing norms of AI use among entertainment professionals and why Davenport is jealous of New York right now. Read more: Jon Voight Spent Months Courting Trump on Tax Help for Hollywood Paramount to Settle Lawsuits, Paving Way for Warner Bros. Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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September 24 · 27 min
AI Is Upending the Lives of People Who Do Social Media Professionally
Social media is really strange these days: Increasingly, our feeds are starting to look uncanny, as AI slop proliferates all over the Internet. And for the professionals who are tasked with making content, whether it is social media managers or creators, it has been a head-spinning time of change. In this conversation, recorded at the Vermont in Hollywood, we get a primer on social media's AI era with two veteran Internet commentators, Rachel Karten (social media consultant and the author of the Link in Bio newsletter) and Taylor Lorenz (founder of User Mag). We discuss why people are afraid to admit that they love some genres of slop, why the AI discourse is evolving so rapidly, and whether our time online is moving away from scrolling feeds to engaging with chatbots. Read more: US Rebukes Australia for Plan to Target Social Media Algorithms Meta’s New Muse AI App Tops Charts, Draws Strong Reviews Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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