Skip to content
Sign in
Artwork for Odd Lots
BusinessInvestingNewsBusiness NewsNews Commentary

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

Play
Open in
  • 1,302 episodes
  • daily
  • Avg 41 min
  • English

Episodes 1,302

NewestOldestLongest
All20Unplayed20In progress0Played0
Counted on this page — what you have heard stays on this device, so it is not something the list can be paged by.
  • Oct 7, 2019 · 1 hr 44 min

    The Odd Lots Variety Show

    On September 19, 2019, Odd Lots hosted its first-ever live event at the WNYC Greene Space in downtown New York City. With an all-star lineup of guests, the show featured convicted white-collar criminal Sam Antar, a panel on sovereign debt with Lee Buchheit and Brad Setser, and a discussion on MMT with Stephanie Kelton. We even had a surprise guest, SPY kid Kevin McGrath, not to mention two musical acts: country-singing economist Merle Hazard and a performance by Joe himself. Be sure to check out videos from the event on Bloomberg's Markets and Finance channel on YouTube. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Oct 1, 2019 · 2 min

    Introducing Stephanomics Season 2

    Stephanie Flanders, head of Bloomberg Economics, returns to bring you another season of on-the-ground insight into the forces driving global growth and jobs today. From the cosmetics maker in California grappling with Donald Trump's tariff war, to the coffee vendor in Argentina burdened by the nation's never-ending crises, Bloomberg's 130-plus economic reporters and economists around the world head into the field to tell these stories. Stephanomics will also look hard at the solutions, in the lead-up to Bloomberg’s second New Economy Forum in Beijing, where a select group of business leaders, politicians and thinkers will gather to chart a better course on trade, global governance, climate and more. Stephanomics will help lead the way for those debates not just with Bloomberg journalists but also discussion and analysis from world-renowned experts into the forces that are moving markets and reshaping the world. The new season of Stephanomics launches Oct. 3. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Sep 30, 2019 · 40 min

    How Financial Repression in China Helped Cause the Trade War

    For years, China has experienced blistering growth. Driven by an investment-heavy economic model, this growth has limited household income while subsidizing business. This system worked extraordinarily well for years, but the system has recently been hitting its limits. On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with Michael Pettis, a longtime China expert who serves as a finance professor at Peking University as well as a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment. He explains why China must rebalance its domestic economy, and how its domestic policies helped contribute to today's trade tensions with the U.S. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Sep 23, 2019 · 43 min

    What Businesses Can Learn From the Collapse of Civilizations

    History is littered with collapsed civilizations ranging from the Maya to Angkor Wat. But what can they tell us about the world today, or doing business in it?. But what can they tell us about the world today, or doing business in it? On this episode, we speak with previous Odd Lots guest, archaeologist Arthur Demarest, often described as the "real Indiana Jones" and who is also Ingram Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University. Demarest has recently been applying business management concepts to his studies of the Mayan economy and the civilization's subsequent collapse. He talks to us about what businesses can learn from these moments in time. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Sep 16, 2019 · 33 min

    Why The Dominant U.S. Dollar Refuses To Go Away

    For years, people have been predicting the demise of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Although the U.S. economy has been shrinking as a share of the world's GDP, the dollar continues to grow ever more dominant. Yet its strength is increasingly cited as a factor behind economic problems around the world. On this week's Odd Lots, the economist David Beckworth, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, explains the dollar's persistent and growing strength. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Sep 9, 2019 · 32 min

    Huw van Steenis On What Central Banks Will Do Next

    Last month, central bankers gathered at the annual Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. A lot of the talk was about the limits of monetary policy when it comes to boosting economic growth and what negative interests could do to the financial system. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney also gave a speech in which he talked about replacing the U.S. dollar's role in the financial system with something else­­—maybe even a central bank-run digital currency similar to Facebook's Libra. On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Huw van Steenis, who was senior adviser to Governor Carney and spent the last year chairing a BOE review of the 'Future of Finance.' He talks about how central banks might respond to a number of issues including the rise of new technology, the changing nature of money, and the harmful effects of negative rates. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Sep 2, 2019 · 38 min

    Why Value Investing Has Been Doing Terribly

    One of the oldest, most basic strategies in investing is value investing, which, for lack of a better way to put it, means "buy stocks that are cheap." Value investing, a style associated with Warren Buffett, systematically attempts to uncover low-priced stocks. But by many measures, value investing hasn't been working recently, as high-priced growth stocks (think: technology) have trounced cheap stocks. On this week's episode, we speak with Chris Meredith, Co-CIO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management about what's behind this underperformance, and why that may be coming to an end. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Aug 27, 2019 · 2 min

    Introducing Prognosis Season 3: Superbugs

    On this new season of Prognosis, we look at the spread of infections that are resistant to antimicrobial medicines. You're probably more likely to have heard of these as superbugs. Their rise has been described as a silent tsunami of catastrophic proportions. We travel to countries on the frontline of the crisis, and explore how hospitals and doctors around the world are fighting back. Prognosis’ new season launches Sept. 5. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Aug 26, 2019 · 39 min

    How to Forecast the Future

    Every day, people are bombarded with predictions of what will happen in the future. In recent months, talk of 'inflection points' in the markets has heated up, and the possibility of the U.S. economic expansion, now the longest in history, coming to an end is being actively discussed. But how do we know if such predictions are good ones? And how can we learn to be better forecasters ourselves? On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we talk to Philip Tetlock, the Leonore Annenberg University Professor of Psychology and Management at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of numerous books and papers on the topic of predictions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Aug 19, 2019 · 49 min

    John Hempton on What's Ailing Bank Stocks

    We live in a world of generally expensive stock markets and bank equities trading at 30-year lows. So says John Hempton, co-founder of hedge fund Bronte Capital and a former bank analyst, who also calls it "one of the great puzzles of the world." On this episode, we take a special trip to Australia to speak with Hempton about banks and how they fit into the way he evaluates good businesses and promising stocks. He notes that bank profit margins have been declining in places with both positive and negative rates. We also speak about how he picks stocks in a market currently trading at eye-watering valuations, why you shouldn't necessarily seek 'value,' and what investors can learn from the early 2000s tech bubble. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Aug 12, 2019 · 37 min

    What Negative Interest Rates Mean for the World

    The amount of negative-yielding debt keeps climbing and now includes bonds issued by emerging market countries and some junk-rated companies. On this week's episode, we talk to Viktor Shvets, Macquarie's Head of Asia Strategy, about why interest rates keep getting lower and why that's a problem for the global economy and financial system. He argues that undermining the 'time value' of money–or the principle that money available now is worth more than money in the future because you can use it to earn additional money–won't lead to economic growth. In fact, he says, negative rates are going to end up leading to a rethink of modern capitalism and political society once people realize they have big consequences. He's also one of the few sell-side analysts who takes Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) pretty seriously. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Aug 5, 2019 · 34 min

    How Science Fiction Explains the U.S.-China Trade War

    It's no secret that a lot of the trade tensions between the U.S. and China have centered on technology, and China has accused the U.S. of trying to stymie its economic development by suppressing its technological advancement. This week's Odd Lots guest argues that, while there are few historical precedents for this sort of technological suppression, there are a lot of them in science fiction. Laban Yu, head of Hong Kong and China research at Jefferies, walks us through the surprising overlap between sci-fi and the trade war. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jul 29, 2019 · 44 min

    Here's How People Are Using Cryptocurrency in Venezuela

    Last month, Facebook announced it was launching its own cryptocurrency called Libra. Facebook says Libra is going to have all sorts of benefits, including helping people without traditional bank accounts and acting as an alternative form of money in countries that don't have stable currencies. At the same time, Facebook's Libra has already been criticized for potentially allowing people to skirt existing government rules. On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Jill Carlson, co-founder of the Open Money Initiative, about the actual use cases of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. She's been studying exactly how people have been using cryptocurrency in one of the world's most unstable monetary systems: Venezuela. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jul 22, 2019 · 38 min

    The Bullish Case for WeWork

    Of all the “unicorn” startups in recent years, perhaps none induces more skepticism than WeWork. Thanks to its gigantic losses and unusual business practices, many view it as the ultimate emblem of Silicon Valley irrationality. But there are some bulls who say the company is misunderstood! On this week’s episode, we speak with Sandy Kory, a managing director at Horizon Partners, about why he’s bullish on WeWork and how it’s misunderstood by so many people. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jul 15, 2019 · 35 min

    Why A Longtime Bull Just Flipped Very Bearish On The Stock Market

    There's always bears out there predicting that the stock market will tank. But many of them aren't worth listening to because they're always saying the same thing, regardless of the market environment. What's interesting, though, is when a longtime bull changes his or her mind. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Bloomberg's very own macro strategist Mark Cudmore. He's been consistently bullish and optimistic about the market and the economy since 2011. But, in the last several weeks, he's flipped his view and is now warning about a recession and a market tumble. On this episode, he explains his reasoning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jul 8, 2019 · 37 min

    What Bitcoin Has To Do With The Dream Of Cryonics

    Bitcoin has been around for roughly a decade now, but people have been working on the dream of an anonymous, digital currency for a lot longer than that. On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with NYU professor Finn Brunton, who is the author of the new book "Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency." Brunton talked to us Bitcoin's pre-history, and about how and why there was a major crossover between digital currency believers and people who want to freeze their bodies in order to live forever. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jul 1, 2019 · 39 min

    Why a Strong Dollar Causes Most of the World Major Pain

    The vast majority of global trade is still denominated in U.S. dollars, making cross-border flows about currencies as much as manufactured goods. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Hyun Song Shin, economic adviser and head of research at the Bank for International Settlements. He talks about why a weaker dollar amounts to looser financial conditions for much of the world. He also gives his outlook on the global economy and the state of credit markets. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jun 24, 2019 · 43 min

    One of Hong Kong's Most Famous Investors Gives His Vision of the City's Future

    There's been a series of historic marches in Hong Kong, with millions of people taking to the streets to protest against an extradition bill that they think will give China more power over the city. On this episode of Odd Lots, we talk to David Webb, one of Hong Kong's most unusual and well-known investors. Webb has amassed a fortune by investing in local stocks but he also advocates for change in Hong Kong's volatile market, where big swings and lackluster corporate governance are often the norm. Here, he talks about how he sees the future of Asia's biggest financial center in the wake of the protests. He also gives his thoughts on U.S.-China relations. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jun 17, 2019 · 29 min

    How Auction Guarantees Are Changing The World Of Art

    Famous, unique pieces of art are inherently illiquid. They don't sell very often, and pricing is inherently difficult to estimate. Nonetheless, it's a huge business, and investors have been attempting for a long time to turn art into a proper asset class. On this week's podcast, we speak to Margaret Carrigan, an editor at The Art Newspaper, about how investors are attempting to financialize the art world via the use of guaranteed prices at auction. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
  • Jun 10, 2019 · 33 min

    What Boy Band Sensation BTS Can Teach Us About Economics

    South Korean boy band BTS is rarely connected to economics, but as the biggest success to come out of K-Pop, it arguably should be. On this week's episode of Odd Lots, we speak to Euny Hong, the author of 'The Birth of Korean Cool,' about how South Korea made cultural exports a key plank in its economic development strategy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

    • Transcript
Showing 1,081–1,100 of 1,302 episodes