Odd Lots

Rory Johnston on How Oil Could Surge to Over $200 a Barrel

10 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Oil has obviously spiked massively since the start of the war with Iran. And if you look at various end products, such as jet fuel, the surge is even ...

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on Tokenization and Prediction Markets for Everything

09 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, we had Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on the podcast to talk to us about his company's plans to tokenize shares of private companies. The idea is...

Henry Blodget on the Software Selloff Hysteria and the Problem for OpenAI

07 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A year ago, all of the talk was about how the big AI companies were wildly overvalued. Everyone was calling it a bubble. Fast forward to now, and a do...

Lots More on the Seaborne Chaos Around the Strait of Hormuz

06 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

With war breaking out in Iran, the price of oil is surging, in part due to the destruction of oil energy infrastructure, but also the ability of anyth...

Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Why He Doesn't Tweet

05 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Lloyd Blankfein was CEO of Goldman Sachs for more than a decade, riding the trading boom to the top of the storied investment bank and steering it thr...

How the Speed of a Trade Got Down to Nearly the Speed of Light

02 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The average person can enter a stock trade on their computer, hit refresh, and the trade is done. As fast as that seems, there are professional trader...

Introducing: Bloomberg This Weekend

01 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

'Bloomberg This Weekend' features unique conversations on business, news, lifestyle and culture. Join David Gura, Christina Ruffini and Lisa Mateo Sat...

James van Geelen on His Viral AI Doom Scenario

28 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Something very unusual happened in the market in the last week of February. It sold off, in part, thanks to an article on Substack. James van Geelen i...

The Scramble Is On for Businesses to Get Their Tariff Refund Checks

27 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs were illegal. And now basically every importer who paid those tariff...

How Insurance Costs Make NYC Construction So Expensive

26 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It's hard to imagine New York City becoming significantly more affordable as long as it remains so expensive to build things. Whether we're talking ab...

Alison Roman's Plan to Conquer the Tomato Sauce Market

23 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Alison Roman is a cult figure in the world of food media. She's written multiple hit cookbooks and several of her recipes have gone viral. And her new...

Jamee Moudud on the Intellectual Roots of Zohranomics

21 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has certain ideas that make mainstream economists' head explode. Anything in the ballpark of rent control, specifically, is w...

A16Z's David George on How Private and Public Markets Fused Into One

20 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This year could be a big one for IPOs. From Anthropic to SpaceX to OpenAI, we could see some gigantic companies hit the public market. But of course, ...

Jared Sleeper on Which Software Companies Will Survive the "SaaSpocalypse"

19 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The start of the year has been an absolutely brutal one for software companies. There’s a big fear that the rise of AI and advanced coding model...

Ray Wang on How AI Is Causing DRAM Prices to Surge

16 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For years, DRAM -- or Dynamic Random Access Memory -- was kind of a sleepy, commoditized aspect of chip industry. Growth was steady, but modest, and p...

The Sixth Bureau, Episode 1: Your Friend From Nanjing

15 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It’s an open secret that the Chinese government has engaged in a global campaign to acquire intellectual property from foreign rivals. At the ce...

Why Adam Posen Thinks Inflation Will Surge Back to 4%

13 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The future is always tough to predict, but generally when it comes to inflation, a lot of the debate is about how long it will take the Federal Reserv...

New CFTC Chairman Michael Selig on How to Regulate Prediction Markets

12 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We are rapidly entering a world in which there are odds on virtually everything. During the recent Super Bowl, the big prediction market platforms did...

Ricardo Hausmann Explains How the Venezuelan Economy Collapsed

09 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Ricardo Hausmann is a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the director of Harvard's Growth Lab. We've talked to him multiple times in the past...

Evolving Money: The Tokenization Tipping Point (Sponsored Content)

08 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In less than three years, the amount of tokenized real-world assets has grown eightfold, to more than $30 billion across equities, fixed income, priva...

Lots More With Charlie McElligott on This Week's SaaSpocalypse

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

This week has been a pretty wild one in markets. Some of the most popular trades of recent years — like going long software, crypto, or gold &md...

How a Former Fed Vice-Chair Is thinking About the Next Fed Chair

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve obviously has big implications for markets. But it also comes with some inte...

This Is How The US Can Become a Player in Rare Earth Metals

05 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

China's dominance of the rare earths market is well known. This not only creates potential vulnerabilities for companies, should access to those rare ...

The Surprising Similarity Between the US and Chinese Internets

03 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the 90s, there was a lot of talk about how the Internet would be a liberalizing force in the world. Bill Clinton famously predicted that it would b...

The Utilities Analyst Who Says the Data Center Demand Story Doesn't Add Up

02 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Utilities analysts are having a moment as the energy sector gets a boost from AI. With an extra 94 gigawatts forecast to be needed by 2030 to power al...

013026_Lots_More_Skanda_Amarnath_Edit_v1

30 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Trump has announced that former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh is going to be his nominee to succeed Jerome Powell. The responses to the news are split amon...

Jeff Currie on the Crazy Surge in Metals, And Why The Supercycle Has Years to Run

30 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The big story this year is the surge in metals. And it's really all metals. The ultimate industrial metal, copper, has been on a massive tear, but so ...

What It's Like to Do Big Ag Business in Venezuela and Ukraine

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump administration says it wants to kick start private investment in Venezuela now that it's captured Maduro. And Ukraine is eventually going to...

What It Takes to Build One of the World's Biggest Banks

26 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of the mega-themes of the economy is that the big keep getting bigger. You see it in technology, where the megacap software companies are outperfo...

Blackstone's Michael Zawadzki on How Private Credit Got so Big

23 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We talk all the time about private credit. And we increasingly talk about it from the perspective of the AI buildout, and how all of these datacenters...

Pimco CEO Manny Roman on Japanese Bonds and the Sell America Trade

22 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this week, we saw something unusual happen in markets. The S&P 500 fell 2%, US Treasury yields rose, and the dollar simultaneously decline...

Why the Tech World Is Going Crazy for Claude Code

19 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the AI industry, there's always a hot new thing. First it was ChatGPT. Then it was the image generators. There was the DeepSeek moment. In the latt...

Lots More on the Protests and Financial Crisis in Iran

16 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One of the extraordinary elements of the civil unrest taking place in Iran is that it's almost impossible to know what's going on. There's a virtually...

How to Make Money From the Booming Demand for Energy

15 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

One thing we can all agree on is that demand for energy, and in particular electricity, is growing by leaps and bounds. But past that, there is going ...

The Fight Over Fed Independence Just Got Taken To a Whole New Level

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Even before Trump's victory in 2024, it was becoming clear that the Fed would come under political pressure like never before. The first year of the n...

Cullen Roche on the Art of Building a Perfect Portfolio

12 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For a long time, you could make plenty of money and sleep easy at night with a simple 60/40 portfolio. You put 60% of your money in stocks and 40% in ...

Greg Grandin on how the Monroe Doctrine Became the Donroe Doctrine

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In some sense, the arrest of Maduro is nothing unusual. For over 200 years, the US viewed the entirety of the Western hemisphere as its legitimate dom...

Here's What Could Happen to Venezuela's Messy $170 Billion of Debt

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

There are a bunch of questions right now about the future of Venezuela, and one of the big ones is what's going to happen to its circa $170 billion pi...

This Is What Maduro's Arrest Means for the Oil Market

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Venezuela is sitting on, by some measures, the biggest oil reserves in the world. And yet, in the immediate wake of Maduro's capture by US forces, the...

What Really Happens at a Fed Research Conference

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, regional Federal Reserve banks host some of the most substantive — and under-the-radar — events in the central banking world: ...

The Business of Butterworth's, the Hottest New Restaurant in Washington DC

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

When the Odd Lots team was down in Washington DC earlier this year, we had a phenomenal meal at a restaurant called Butterworth's. As it turns out, th...

Tracy and Joe Answer All Your Questions

01 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

It's that time of the year. On this episode, Tracy and Joe answer questions from listeners that were submitted via voice note. We talk about everythin...

Goldman's Hatzius and Snider on the Outlook for 2026

29 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

2025 was an extraordinary year, with the real economy defying recession worries and equity markets putting up monster returns. So can this be repeated...

Merryn Talks Money: John Law, The Gambler Who Invented Modern Money (Part 1)

26 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hello Odd Lots listeners! As we take a break for the holidays we'd like to take a moment and bring you an episode by one of our sister shows here at B...

Scott Kupor's New Plan to Bring Tech Workers Into the Federal Government

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you're a high-skilled tech worker, then potentially huge fortunes await you working for a startup or one of our booming AI giants. But the governme...

Why Americans Are Falling Behind on Auto Loans At Their Highest Level Ever

22 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

By and large, American households are in a healthy economic position. Yes, unemployment has been rising, but it's still at fairly low levels. Consumer...

The Booming Business of Chinese Peptides

19 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You probably already know someone doing peptides — the amino acids that form the basis of popular new drug treatments like Ozempic and Wegovy. T...

Meet the Politician the AI Industry Is Trying to Stop

18 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The politics of AI are already exploding. Whether we're talking about data centers, electricity prices, labor displacement, water consumption, competi...

MeatEater's Steven Rinella on the Economic History of Hunting

15 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When we think about America’s economic rise, we usually point to agriculture or the industrial revolution. But in the early days of colonization...

D.A. Wallach Explains Why Biotech VC Is So Different

12 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Most people think of venture capital as funding software startups or, these days, some new AI tool. But VC also plays a major role in developing new m...

This Is What It Takes to Get a Data Center Financed

11 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Data centers are weird things. They're partly real estate assets. They're partly extremely advanced technological products. And they have to find a wa...

Dan Ivascyn Is Excited About a New Era in Fixed Income

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the years since the financial crisis, bond investors didn't get much return for taking on risk. With low interest rates and little sign of inflatio...

How Microsoft Excel Conquered Corporate America

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Excel. If you work in corporate America, that word either inspires laser-focused productivity or pure dread. Over the last 40 years, the spreadsh...

Affirm's Max Levchin Breaks Down How Buy Now, Pay Later Really Works

05 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Max Levchin probably knows as much about online payments as anyone. He was part of the original "PayPal mafia" before going on to become co-founder an...

AI Can Tell Us Something About Credit Market Weakness

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There have been some wobbles in credit markets lately. It hasn't been too dramatic, but we've had some blowups, leading Jamie Dimon to speculate about...

Travis Kavulla Explains Why Electric Bills Shot Up

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's an incredible amount of focus on the grid this days. That's notable because for a long time, the grid was hardly of any interest. For years, l...

This Is Why Credit Card Interest Rates Are So High

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Some people pay off their credit cards at the end of each month. They use the cards as a payment method and collect points and rewards, and never have...

Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The US and China are in a "Thucydides Trap," whereby the risk of war is heightened when an established power is threatened by a rapidly rising power. ...

Ray Dalio on the Five Forces That Make This a Historical Moment

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You're not imagining it. This really is a moment of tremendous historical change. Various forces are all aligned right now and reshaping how the world...

Risky Business Preview

23 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Here’s a preview of another podcast we enjoy, Risky Business with Nate Silver and MariaKonnikova. Risky Business is a weekly podcast about makin...

Why America's Cattle Ranchers Keep Getting Squeezed

22 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The country's cattle herd has shrunk to its smallest size in decades and beef prices have been soaring this year, with hamburgers and steaks becoming ...

What Susan Collins Wants to See Before Supporting Another Rate Cut

21 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In early November, it looked like almost a sure thing that the Federal Reserve would cut rates. Since then, the odds have come in dramatically, as a n...

Tyler Cowen on Why AI Hasn't Changed the World Yet

20 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In many respects, AI technology is already mind-blowing, and can perform many tasks far better than the average person. And yet by and large, its impa...

The Politics of AI Are About to Explode

19 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI wasn't much of a topic in the 2024 election. But it will almost certainly be big in 2028, and probably even the 2026 midterms. There are concerns a...

Jeffrey Gundlach Says Almost All Financial Assets Are Now Overvalued

17 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Stocks are overpriced. Bonds are overpriced. And private assets are a powder keg. This is the view of Jeffrey Gundlach, the founder and CEO of DoubleL...

Citi's Dirk Willer on How You Know When the Bubble Is Over

15 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

According to Dirk Willer, the Global Head of Macro Strategy at Citigroup, we are definitely in bubble territory. Per his research, the stock market ha...

Why Paul Kedrosky Says AI Is Like Every Bubble All Rolled Into One

14 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In recent weeks, there's been renewed anxiety about the sustainability of the AI boom. This is partly due to comments from OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar abou...

Cliff Asness on How Markets Got Dumber in the Last 10 Years

13 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Odd Lots podcast has been around for 10 years. Unfortunately, markets have gotten less rational over the same time frame. At least this is the con...

Jerry Neumann on the Problem With Investing in AI Right Now

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

AI has made a lot of people fabulously wealthy. But sorry, it's probably not going to be the thing that makes you rich. And if history is any guide, w...

How Chinese Real Estate Became the Biggest Bubble in History

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Land is a weird asset. We need it to be affordable because everyone needs somewhere to live. But for many people, real estate is also their biggest st...

The Viral Milk That Helped Set Off America's Protein Boom

08 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Protein seems to be everywhere these days, with brands from Starbucks to Pepsi jumping on the trend. But the obsession with protein may have started e...

Lots More on the Worsening State of the US Labor Market

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If the government were open, we'd be getting a jobs report today. But as it is, we're in this blackout of official economic data. That's unfortunate, ...

Dmitry Shevelenko on Perplexity's Vision for Reshaping the Internet

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The news business isn't a great one these days. At least for a lot of legacy outlets (newspapers, cable networks, print magazines etc.), the Internet ...

San Francisco's New Mayor on Homelessness, Unaffordability, and AI

03 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New York City is about to elect a new mayor, and whoever it is will have to address growing challenges like unaffordability, homelessness, and other b...

How Hudson River Trading Actually Uses AI

31 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem as though you can get great stock picks just by going to ChatGPT and asking it to recommend some investments. And yet f...

The Movement That Wants Us to Care About AI Model Welfare

30 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

You hear a lot about AI safety, and this idea that sufficiently advanced AI could pose some kind of threat to humans. So people are always talking abo...

Why It's Still So Expensive to Build Homes in America

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone has an opinion on why housing is so expensive in America -- and to be fair, there are probably a lot of reasons for it. But one simple factor...

The Hidden Supply Chain Making Every Menu Feel Familiar

25 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you go out to eat at a restaurant, whether it's a fast food chain or a Michelin-starred bistro, there's a good chance the ingredients on your plate...

Daniel Yergin on What Happened to the Energy Transition

24 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A few years ago, governments and corporations were brimming with optimism about the prospect of getting to net-zero in the efforts against climate cha...

Why The World Started Hedging Its US Dollar Exposure

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Some economists expected that the dollar would strengthen when the tariffs were imposed. Instead, the opposite happened. The dollar fell sharply and i...

Olli Rehn on the Big Competitiveness Challenge Facing Europe

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 2010s saw economic weakness across Europe's periphery. Countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, and so forth were the sites of so much stress. In the ...

Raghuram Rajan on Surging Gold and Growing Risks to Financial Stability

20 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gold has been surging. Risky assets (with a few minor hiccups) have also been surging. And yet, central bankers (most notably the Fed) are in rate cut...

Introducing: The Mishal Husain Show

19 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Make sense of the world with one essential conversation, every week. Mishal Husain, one of Britain's best interviewers, brings her signature blend of ...

A Trip to Alaska With San Fran Fed President Mary Daly

17 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year, we traveled along with San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly on a trip to Alaska. You may remember the episodes we did with Mary at...

Why the Trump Administration is Now Taking Equity Stakes in American Companies

16 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's nothing new for the US government to use public money to support private American companies. The Biden administration, via CHIPS and the Inflatio...

Why Argentina Needs Bailout After Bailout After Bailout

15 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Argentina is getting bailed out again, with $40 billion of help from the Trump administration. Of course, this is a recurring phenomenon for Argentina...

Andrew Ross Sorkin on the Stock Market Crash That Shattered America

13 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Almost everyone is talking about us possibly being in a bubble. Regardless of how AI investment ultimately pan out, there is an incredible amount of r...

John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan

10 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

These days, there's a non-stop drumbeat of concern that China and its dominant companies will eat America's economic lunch, so to speak. Of course, th...

Why the Price of Money Surged in the Last 6 Years

09 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What changed between 2019 and 2025? Why are interest rates so much higher? Why does it seem virtually unfathomable that the Fed will return to ZIRP an...

James Van Geelen on the Next Phase of the AI Buildout

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Money has been flowing into the AI space, with billions pouring into GPU clusters, data centers, gas turbines, and the infrastructure needed to train ...

Lots More with Joe Abate on the Fed's New Target and the Rising Price of Money

03 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We're used to talking about the Federal Reserve changing "benchmark interest rates." But the mechanics of how the central bank actually tightens or lo...

Terry Duffy on the CME's Big Push into Retail Trading

02 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

CME Group is one of the oldest exchanges around, tracing it's history all the way back to the late 1800s, when it specialized in agricultural commodit...

Tarek Mansour on Kalshi's Plan to Create Markets in Everything

01 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For over 20 years, people have been talking about prediction markets or event markets are the next big thing. But mostly, with some niche exceptions, ...

The King of Chicago Trading Wants to Build a GPU Market Bigger Than Oil

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Don Wilson has built a career diving into some of trading’s thorniest problems, including figuring out ways to trade new and niche markets. Now,...

Introducing IVF Disrupted: The Kindbody Story

28 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kindbody, one of the largest fertility companies in the US, sought to disrupt egg freezing and IVF by combining spa vibes with Silicon Valley efficien...

Jack Morris on Finding the Next Big AI Breakthrough

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We know that the top-tier AI labs are spending unbelievable amounts of money on talent. But what are these researchers actually working on? And how do...

Ozan Tarman on What's Driving The Nonstop Rise in Gold and Tech

25 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are two huge winning trades that people are looking at day after day. Gold keeps going up and US tech stocks keep going up. But what is driving ...

Jim Cramer on the Retail Trading Revolution

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In recent years, retail trading of stocks has absolutely exploded. This is happening despite the fact that investors are subject to a constant stream ...

Michael Froman on the New 'Polyamorous' Global Trading System

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When President Trump announced the tariffs on Liberation Day, it seemed to truly mark the end of the old world trading system. But of course it had be...

Henry Wang on China's Role in the New Emerging World Order

19 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There is a widespread view that China is a superpower of rising status, and that a new global order is emerging with the country as an important pole ...