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Odd Lots

Bloomberg

#16 in Business this week

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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  • June 11 · 54 min

    Why Tomatoes Are the Most Expensive They've Been in Four Decades

    In April, the price of tomatoes was around $2.69 per pound — the highest seen in some four decades. And tomatoes aren't the only food getting more expensive. From cauliflower to lettuce, fresh produce is spiking all over the place. So what's driving the price spike? And what can tomatoes teach us teach about America's political economy including changes in trade and tariffs? Our guest today is Jacob Krempel, senior vice president of procurement and merchandising at the wholesale food distributor Baldor, and an expert in securing fresh produce. We talk to him about where America's tomato supply actually comes from, why consumers are paying more and more, how restaurants navigate price fluctuations, and the influx of novel new tomato varieties. Read more: The Recipe for a Power Restaurant Has Changed The Latest Snack Innovations Are Basically Just Creamsicles and Chex Mix 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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  • June 8 · 50 min

    How CoreWeave Sees the Market for Compute Right Now

    When we last spoke to Brannin McBee, the co-founder and chief development officer of cloud company CoreWeave, his business was not yet public and sourcing GPUs was a key constraint on growth. But three years later, things look pretty different. CoreWeave IPOed and has been raising money in the bond market too, as well as signing more deals with chipmaker Nvidia. In fact, investors have basically been throwing money at all-things-AI. But there are persistent bottlenecks to further growth. Chip supply is still scarce, but so are transformers and electricity. In this episode, we catch up with Brannin on everything he's seeing in the market for compute right now, including leases, Nvidia's new Vera Rubin systems, demand for training versus inference, and the possibility of standardizing the market for compute. Read more: Trump Officials Worry US Loophole Let Chinese Firms Buy Nvidia Blackwell Chips Broadcom Slides Most Since January 2025 on AI Outlook Miss 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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  • June 6 · 31 min

    Why Susquehanna Is Building a Prediction Markets Business

    Prediction markets that enable you to bet on pretty much everything are everywhere nowadays. But there's still a big question over whether they can expand to include larger institutional investors like hedge funds. Part of the problem is that a lot of prediction market contracts are illiquid and trading volumes can sometimes be shallow. That's where trading firm Susquehanna International Group comes in. In this episode, recorded live at New York's City Winery, we talk to Jeremy Maletz, Susquehanna's head of macro trading and prediction markets, about the firm's market-making business with Kalshi. We talk about how big investors could use prediction markets, what Susquehanna is seeing in terms of flows, how a market-maker hedges risk on these contracts, and how it makes money from them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • June 5 · 31 min

    Inside Hudson River Trading's Blistering Token Burn

    Today’s episode, which was recorded at our recent live show at New York’s City Winery, follows up on a conversation we had with Iain Dunning, head of AI at Hudson River Trading. Last year, we talked about how his firm uses AI. Now, some seven months later, we follow up on how one of the biggest market makers around is deploying this technology. We talk about the price of memory, bottlenecks in compute, how much HRT employees are actually spending on tokens, why the firm might develop its own chips, as well as AI-induced delirium. Read more: Jane Street Plans New Data Center as Compute Power Runs Scarce Nvidia-Backed Robotics Startup Generalist AI Valued at $2 Billion 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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  • June 4 · 1 hr 5 min

    Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on Running a Bank in the Age of AI

    There's a lot of debate about the future of AI — not just whether it will produce the returns investors are expecting, but also if AI will lead to mass worker displacement. Big banks are the perfect prism through which to explore some of these questions. Not only are they deploying AI very quickly, but they have a wide range of workers who are using the technology, from back-office employees to junior analysts to the most senior investment bankers. In this episode, we speak with David Solomon, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, about the impact of AI on the banking business, and why he does not predict a major white collar wipeout. We talk about the outlook for headcount, current conditions in capital markets, and the bank's role in the upcoming SpaceX IPO and Alphabet's historic equity capital raise. He also tells us about his early career in junk bonds and (because of his love of electronic dance music) how AI is transforming music production. Read: Anthropic Picks Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs to Lead IPO Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • June 1 · 46 min

    The Hidden Plumbing of Commodity Finance

    We talk about the commodity supply chain all the time. We talk about the ports and the trucks and the ships and all of that. But there's another dimension to moving commodities all around the world, which is actually paying for it. Who funds the oil tanker and what happens when that tanker is, say, stuck in the Strait of Hormuz? Commodity finance underpins production, transportation and storage of a wide variety of the things that make the modern world, but you tend to only hear about it when things go wrong. Today we speak with Lewis Hart, head of corporate advisory and banking at Brown Brothers Harriman. We discuss how the business of commodity finance actually works, how risk is priced, what makes for a good or bad warehouse, and the difference between financing a commodity you can hedge (like oil) versus one where's there's no futures market (like cashews). Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • May 30 · 36 min

    How the Invention of Rope Gave Us Modern Civilization

    Rope is easy to take for granted. It seems obvious and straightforward. But of course, it had to be invented. Early humans discovered that by twisting fibers around each other, the resulting structure would be something durable and strong. Without rope, all kinds of things aren't possible, from lifting objects into the air to whaling or modern bridges. So how was it developed and what were the big breakthroughs in its history? On this episode, we speak with Tim Queeney, the author of the recent book Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted Fibers Became the Backbone of Civilization. He walks us through the history of the technology, and its ongoing evolution, including how it might one day allow to build an elevator into outer space. Read more: Japan Cablemaker Rout Exposes Cracks in AI Infrastructure Rally Why Huawei’s New Chipmaking Plan Has Investors Buzzing Only 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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  • May 29 · 51 min

    Gita Gopinath on Why Interest Rates Have Surged All Around the World

    There's been a massive selloff in the bond market and rates are rising all around the world. Japan, Korea, the UK... You name it. Gita Gopinath, Harvard economics professor and the former first deputy managing director of the IMF, has long warned that bond markets are "in a fragile place." She sees a confluence of demographics, high levels of public debt, and the intense capital needs of the AI boom creating inflationary pressure all around the world. Today we speak with Gopinath about the seeming disconnect between stocks and bonds and why investors may be wrong to assume that governments will have their back the next time there's a major shock. Read more: US Bonds’ Return to Pre-War Calm Fuels Bets It’ll Be Short-Lived China Sells $885 Million of Green Bonds in Hong Kong Debut 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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  • May 28 · 55 min

    Brendan Greeley on the Real 500-Year History of the Dollar

    We love talking about money. And of course, we love talking about the dollar, in all its varieties — from bank deposits to eurodollars to stablecoins. But what fundamentally is a dollar and who actually controls it? To understand these questions, you need to understand how the dollar was born. Journalist (and current Ph.D. candidate in financial history) Brendan Greeley argues not only that the dollar is older than you might suspect, but that the dollar long precedes the United States itself. In fact, the word is derived from German, referring to a Spanish currency made from silver found in Mexico. In this episode, we discuss Brendan's new book, The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money. He explains not only the dollar's surprising history, but also what actually backs the US dollar and gives it purchasing power. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • May 25 · 1 hr 8 min

    What It Takes to Run One of London's Most Popular Pubs

    As our listeners know, restaurants are great microcosms for macro-economic trends. They sit at the intersection of everything from consumer confidence to commodity costs to the labor market. So on our recent visit to London, we wanted to learn about the business of pubs. According to the British Beer and Pub Association, approximately two pubs a day have closed in England during the first quarter of 2026. Could pubs tell us something about larger trends in the British economy? And when it comes to the day-to-day operations of the business: How is a pub different from a regular bar? And how are publicans — pub managers — dealing with the era of the £10 pint? Today's episode is a special two-parter, devoted to the business of pubs. We talk to Oisin Rogers and Ashley Palmer-Watts, co-founders of the Devonshire, a famed London pub. The first part is with Rogers, who is the publican, and we discuss the difference between a good and bad pub, why he hates the word 'gastropub,' and how the indoor smoking ban changed the meaning of pubs for the average Londoner. Second up is a segment from our London live show with the Devonshire chef Palmer-Watts, who tells us about the complicated confluence of factors — from temperature to the right mix of gases — that lead to a perfect pint of Guinness, why higher ingredient costs (whether it's beef or scallops) don't always correlate to higher menu prices, and making a Victorian-era meat fruit for Apple's Jony Ive. Read more: Reeves Floats Price Freezes on Food in Bid to Cut UK Bills Inflation Resurgence Squeezes US Voters as Gas, Food Prices Rise ?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=odd_lots&utm_content=article 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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  • May 23 · 54 min

    Architect Norman Foster on Why the West Struggles to Build Big

    Not many people think of designing buildings as an exercise in economics, but the entire process is defined by constraints around resources (both physical and financial), and an iconic building can also have a huge impact on the wealth and development of the area around it. So how do you encourage private developers to consider the public good when designing new projects? And how are some countries able to encourage more landmark building projects than others? In this episode, we speak with Norman Foster, renowned architect and founder of Foster + Partners. We talk to him about how constraints impact his own design process, how building budgets actually work, what makes a building successful in the long run, why China keeps completing mega-project after mega-project, and why places like the UK and the US are now struggling to keep up. Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • May 22 · 31 min

    'The Assassin' Fahmi Quadir on How to Survive as a Short-Seller

    A short seller is a gumshoe who roots out a particular story about a specific company and brings it to light. And Fahmi Quadir, the founder and CIO of Safkhet Capital, has been labeled "The Assassin" for being one of the most famous, successfully betting against companies like Wirecard and Valeant. In today's conversation with Quadir, recorded at our live show in London at Wilton's Music Hall, she dishes on what life is like for a short seller and why betting against stocks has been getting harder even during what she calls a "golden age of fraud." She also reveals that she's going long for the first time ever by investing strategically in one of the world's best-performing markets. Read more: Korea Exchange Is Said to Launch Weekly Options on Single Stocks Swiss Pension Fund Eyes $1.1 Billion Private Credit Investment 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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  • May 21 · 51 min

    Why Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman Built The World's Largest Computer Chip

    Size is the name of the game for the AI chipmaker Cerebras: Their chips are truly massive, about the size of a dinner plate. According to Andrew Feldman, CEO and founder of Cerebras, that is about 58 times larger than the average chip. That sheer size enables blazing fast inference for AI queries. Feldman joins us on the week of his company's IPO to talk about his core product and how it fits into the AI boom. We discuss the history of the GPU, competition between open-and closed-source models, the company's relationship with with TSMC, and more. Read more: Nvidia Tells Skeptical Investors That AI Is Ready to Go Mainstream Trump Set to Sign AI Cybersecurity Directive as Soon as Thursday 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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  • May 19 · 28 min

    Deutsche Bank's Ozan Tarman and Aditya Singhal on Understanding the Macro Risks

    It is hard to have a markets conversation that isn't out of date within a minute or two. But we think this one, with Ozan Tarman and Aditya Singhal of Deutsche Bank, is basically evergreen. This conversation, recorded at our live show at Wilton's Music Hall in London, is all about fundamentals: How Tarman, DB's vice chair of global macro, and Singhal, the firm’s head of EM trading across rates, FX and Credit, make sense of conflicting headlines, whether the rally in tech stocks is to be believed, the tug of war between fast money and central bankers, and how traders are evaluating the difference between the AI models coming out of the US and China. Read more: Global Inventory Race Intensifies in Shadow of the Iran War Emerging Carry Trade Rebounds, Top Picks Include Real, Rand 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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  • May 18 · 30 min

    Why the Price of Oil, Beef, Electricity, and Everything Else Makes No Sense

    Whether it's the price of a barrel of Brent crude or a pound of beef, it's clear prices are skyrocketing for all kinds of goods and commodities. Price shocks and shortages are, if anything, the way consumers understand the economy right now — at the grocery store or at the gas pump. Certainly, current (and future) shocks can be explained by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But the environment is weirder than just across the board price increases: The price of corn has barely moved, for instance, while fertilizer just keeps going up. We have not one but two perfect guests to talk to us today, our favorite commodity specialists: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas and Lorcan Roche Kelly, the business editor at Irish Farmers Journal. Today's episode — which was recorded on stage at Wilton's Music Hall in London as part of our first ever show outside the US — covers how the world's farmers feel about US trade policy, why today's energy shock is so different from 2022's, the true impact of the UAE leaving OPEC, and why it's going to get harder to buy hard cheese in the near future. Read more: Global Bond Selloff Worsens as Rising Oil Prices Spook Investors China Allows Exports for 425 US Beef Plants, Trade Group 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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  • May 16 · 47 min

    Stripe's John Collison on How Agentic Commerce Will Reshape the Internet

    The internet is made for shopping. For years, the main inputs for e-commerce transactions involved targeted ads, algorithmic recommendations, SEO, and lots of mindless scrolling. But agentic commerce might represent a sea change for e-commerce: With the rise of AI agents doing shopping on behalf of consumers, how are retailers going to adapt? John Collison, co-founder of the financial services and payment processing company Stripe, has first-hand experience with all the ways e-commerce has changed in the last decade, and he thinks agentic commerce is going to completely transform the online shopping experience. On this episode, we speak to Collison about how AI has already changed the way consumers make purchasing decisions, why keyword search is a "ridiculous" way to find things to buy, what it means when brands will have to appeal to AI agents as opposed to human buyers, and if AI agents can truly mimic human taste. Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • May 15 · 53 min

    Why SocGen's Albert Edwards Sees Double-Digit Inflation Coming Back

    Making a long career as a bear at a sell-side institution is tough. Generally financial markets have done quite well which means forecasting doom and gloom is, usually, only tenable for so long. Which is why we wanted to talk to one of the most successful bears out there. Société Générale has let Albert Edwards out of the bear cage for today's episode. Edwards knows his reputation as a bear is well deserved: He believes, among other things, double-digit inflation is in the offing. We also talk about the attention span of readers on the buy-side, what success looks like for a bear, and how a bear avoids getting fired. Read more: Boeing Falls After Trump Unveils Smaller China Aircraft Order BOE’s Pill Says Strong Iran Price Pressures Warrant Rate Rise 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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  • May 14 · 1 hr 5 min

    Martin Wolf on the 'Terrifying' Superpower That the US Wields

    Last year, when we talked to Martin Wolf, the global order seemed like it was being upended after President Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs against nearly every US trading partner. A lot has happened since then. In fact, April 2025 seems almost quaint when compared to 2026 so far, from the Supreme Court's tariff ruling to the US-Israel war with Iran. The war's effect on the world's economy is at once stunning and utterly strange: even as the prices of major commodities — oil chief among them — rise, the markets seem unaffected, closing at record levels in recent weeks. Today we speak with Wolf, the chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, about all this chaos and why, so far, it seems disconnected from the logic of the market. There is, he says, a great deal of ruin in the world economy, but growth remains a constant fact of life. Why is that? There's no straightforward answer, but to begin understanding how we got here, Wolf takes us to the early 20th century and paints us a picture of the world after the two World Wars. We also talk about the "terrifying" power that the US wields over the globe, how a fragmented Europe is navigating anxious relationships with both the US and China, the Faustian bargain AI represents, and much more. Read more: Oil Inventories Falling at Record Pace on Iran War, IEA Says Undersea Internet Cable Projects Are Getting Tangled in the Iran War 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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  • May 13 · 42 min

    Samanth Subramanian on the Undersea Cables That Keep the Internet Alive

    In 2006, then-Senator Ted Stevens coined an infamous term for how to understand the internet: It's a "series of tubes." The funny thing is, that's a fairly accurate description. Underneath the world's oceans, miles and miles of fiber optic-cables send packets of information from one location to the next, serving as the backbone of the internet as know it. This infrastructure is delicate, too: Memorably, a 2022 volcanic eruption cut off the island of Tonga from web access for an extended period of time. Journalist Samanth Subramanian is the author of The Web Beneath the Waves: The Fragile Cables That Connect Our World, a book that explains, in detail, that the internet is not, and has never been, truly weightless or wireless. In fact, the system in place right now is pretty old school and resembles the telegraph cable network of yore. We talk to Subramanian about the strange contradictions of the undersea cable system, how much basic marine geography — like the Strait of Hormuz or the Suez Canal — informs where cables are laid, and how hard it is protect this vulnerable and vital infrastructure. Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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  • May 11 · 52 min

    The Bank of England's Megan Greene on Monetary Policy in a World of Supply Shocks

    Ever since Covid, central banks around the world have had the same problem. They have tools that are designed to modulate demand, but so many challenges have involved the supply side of the economy. Whether we're talking about supply chain disruptions, the war in Ukraine, and now the war in Iran, these are all issues for which monetary policy is of limited value. Of course, the temptation is to "look through" these events, recognizing the fact that these disruptions don't say much about the actual underlying state of the economy. But when we get one shock after another, it gets harder and harder to keep using words like "transitory." On this episode we speak with Megan Greene, an external member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England. We talk about the compounding effects of all these shocks (including the trade war and Brexit), how she's thinking about the first- and second-order effects of each, and why for now, despite the underlying weakness of the UK economy, she remains squarely focused on the risks of higher inflation. Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Showing 81–100 of 1,302 episodes