This Is the Vision for DeFi Built on Bitcoin
01 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot of hype about so-called DeFi (decentralized finance) these days, and much of it is bas...
Tom Schmidt Explains What You Need to Know about DeFi
28 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By now you've no doubt heard about DeFi: the hot vision of crypto that aims to disrupt traditional l...
Hyun Song Shin on CBDCs and the Future of Central Banking
24 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The world's central bankers are facing challenges the likes of which they've never seen before. We'r...
The Trucking Episode: Why the Industry Is Such a Mess
21 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You can't talk about the problems in logistics and supply chains right now without talking about tru...
Why Ram Parameswaran Says the World's Biggest Tech Stocks Are Ridiculously Cheap Right Now
17 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone knows that tech stocks performed amazingly well amid the coronavirus crisis. In the last fe...
Why Tracy Can't Ship a Teddy Bear from Hong Kong to the U.S. Right Now
14 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By this point, you're aware that shipping anything internationally is pretty tough right now. It tur...
Why Brooklyn Nets Star Spencer Dinwiddie Co-Founded a Crypto Startup
10 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last year, numerous celebrities and athletes have gotten into crypto in some way. For examp...
This Is How the U.S. Ran Out of Homes for Sale
07 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Home demand is booming. By some measures, the market is even hotter than it was during the peak prio...
Dan Ariely on How To Win Big by Betting on Human Capital
03 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dan Ariely is one of the most famous behavioral economists in the world. And in his latest act, he's...
Roshun Patel on What Really Happened During the Crypto Market Crash
31 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The crypto market recently experienced one of its worst crashes ever, with numerous coins cut in hal...
Data Centers, Crypto Miners, and Gamers Are All Battling for Semiconductors
27 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
These days, there's a shortage of chips everywhere you look. Some of it is related to idiosyncratic ...
Daniela Gabor on the Critical Case Against Private Sector ESG
24 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last few years, ESG has become a gigantic industry. Due to concerns over climate, the treat...
Aaron Lammer on Yield Farming and Trading in the World of DeFi
20 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Decentralized Finance," "Yield farming"... you've probably heard these terms before, but have very ...
How the World's Companies Wound Up in a Deepening Supply Chain Nightmare
17 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By now, everybody knows that global supply chains are a mess. Not a day goes by where there isn't ne...
Jared Bernstein on Taxes, Spending, and Why President Biden Wants to 'Pay for It'
13 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jared Bernstein has been a longtime advisor to President Joe Biden. He was his advisor while Biden w...
A Special Announcement From Joe and Tracy
11 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Please check out this special announcement from Joe and Tracy, who have an update on a new Odd Lots ...
Viktor Shvets on Inflation and How Crypto Could Cause the Next Financial Crisis
10 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What will the economy really look like when things normalize? Lots of people are, of course, anticip...
Hayden Adams Explains Uniswap and the Rise of DeFi
06 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's an irony with crypto. While so much of it is ostensibly about circumventing legacy finance, ...
How to Make the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Boom Again
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This year, everyone's become aware of the hollowing out of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing capacity...
What Adam Tooze Learned About the World Last Year
29 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's probably nobody better at synthesizing massive events like Columbia professor Adam Tooze. Hi...
Why the Price of Lumber Has Soared Day After Day After Day
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's not often that lumber becomes a national obsession. But this year it has. Thanks to a combinati...
How to Build a Portfolio That Outperforms For a Century
22 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There's a huge question mark at the moment about whether markets are at some sort of important turni...
John Hempton on Greensill, Archegos and What It's Like To Short Right Now
19 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's a weird moment for the markets. The big stock indices are near all time highs. And yet there ha...
Zach Carter on the Real Story of Weimar Hyperinflation
15 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Whenever the government is engaging in fiscal or monetary expansion, people like to invoke the histo...
Slavoj Žižek on GameStop, WallStreetBets, and the Future of Capitalism
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When GameStop shares skyrocketed earlier this year, numerous pundits were quick to ascribe political...
Why Treasury Market Spasms That Shouldn't Happen Keep Happening
08 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. Treasury market is the biggest, most liquid market in the world. Its smooth functioning is ...
Why the True Price of a Bond Can Still Be Hard To Know
05 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the modern age, we expect to be able to turn on our computers, enter in a ticker, and know the ac...
The Ex-Jane Street Trader Who's Building a Multi-Billion Crypto Empire
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The crypto market has come a long way in recent years. But it's still far less efficient than your t...
How Gigantic Ships Are Creating Global Supply Chain Havoc
31 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Ever Given has been freed from the Suez Canal. But the whole situation was indicative of a broad...
Virtu CEO Doug Cifu Explains Payment for Order Flow and the Future of HFT
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the GameStop and Robinhood story exploded at the end of January, suddenly everyone took an inte...
Josh Younger on the Soaring Cost of Climate Change and Understanding the SLR
25 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is the connection between the big trend in interest rates over the last several years and the c...
Luke Kawa on the Macro Situation Right Now
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over the last several weeks, we've seen major developments in the macro situation. The vaccine rollo...
Stephanie Kelton on How MMT Won the Fiscal Policy Debate
18 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a sense, Modern Monetary Theory has won. This is not because policy measures are necessarily in l...
Did We Just Experience a Break in the Neoliberal Consensus?
15 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, the dominant economic philosophy of the United States has been that fiscal policy shoul...
Introducing: Doubt
12 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
A few decades ago, nobody really questioned vaccines. They were viewed as a standard part of staying...
Michael Pettis on Persistent Imbalances in Post-Pandemic China
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
By some measures, the Chinese economy did better in 2020 than just about anywhere else. For one thin...
Why Music Back Catalogs Have Become a Red-Hot Asset Class
08 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bob Dylan did it last year. Shakira did it in January. More and more famous musicians are selling of...
Coming Soon: The Pay Check Season 3
05 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
More than 150 years after the end of slavery in the U.S., the net worth of a typical white family is...
Zoltan Pozsar on What Just Happened with the Treasury Market
04 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Treasury market just experienced what some might call a tantrum. Across the yield curve, we saw ...
Howard Lindzon Tells Us Why He Launched His Own SPAC
01 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
SPACs, sometimes referred to as blank check companies, are incredibly hot. After being a sort of sle...
How Chinese Buying Is Causing a Boom in Agricultural Commodities
25 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are lots of hot areas in the market, which everybody knows. Stocks are obviously hot, as are i...
This Is How the World Ended up with a Shortage of Semiconductors
22 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The world is facing a chip shortage. Numerous companies, including the auto sector, are facing an in...
A Value Manager on How Most Value Managers Are Getting It All Wrong
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As you might have heard, so-called value investing has not had a good run. At least from a quantitat...
How Boring Food and Beverage Companies Turn into Huge Stock Winners Year after Year
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
During the worst of the pandemic, people loaded up on staples from their grocery store. Shelf-stable...
How Monster Beverage Shares Soared a Monster 100,000% in the Last 20 Years
15 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When you think about the big winners in the stock market over the past couple of decades, you might ...
ARK's Head of Research on How They Find the Next Huge Winner
11 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In a world dominated by passive investing on one end and retail YOLO traders on the other, there are...
Mike Novogratz's Vision for Rebuilding Finance with Crypto
08 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Bitcoin, and crypto more broadly, have been on a huge tear lately. Then, with the chaos surrounding ...
Goldman's Jeff Currie on the Silver Squeeze and the Coming Boom in Commodities
04 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a weird several days in the market. What started with a short squeeze in GameStop, driven ...
Benn Eifert Explains How Retail Trading Is Rocking Markets like Never Before
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We know that retail activity, much of it on Robinhood, has been surging since last spring once the l...
Is The GameStop Trade Really A Political Rebellion?
02 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The GameStop short squeeze is one of the most extraordinary events to ever happen in markets. But do...
Can Open-Source Semiconductors Upend the Chip Industry?
01 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're seeing historic change happening in real time in the chip industry. The old leaders are going ...
How One Online Investor Made the Score of a Lifetime on GameStop
29 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Everyone is talking about GameStop. The physical games retailer that was left for dead has been one ...
Dan Wang on China's Mission to Be a World Leader in Semiconductors
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We've been talking a lot on the podcast about semiconductors. The stumble of Intel. The general trou...
The Story of How TSMC Came to Dominate the World
25 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In every conversation about computer chips, it always comes back to the dominant player: TSMC. Found...
The Important Lesson a Quant Manager Learned in 2020
21 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It goes without saying that 2020 was a year like no other when it comes to the markets. A historic c...
Why the Cost of Shipping Goods From China Is Suddenly Soaring
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus crisis snarled global shipping in early 2020 as borders were closed, but lots of peo...
How the U.S. Lost Chip Dominance and How It Can Be Regained
14 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. was once a manufacturing leader in semiconductors. That's no longer the case, given the ris...
Cowen's Co-President on Why SPACs Are Having Such a Moment
11 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
One of the surprising developments in the last year was the boom in SPACs. The so-called blank check...
Chess Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura on Twitch Streaming and “The Queen's Gambit”
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're in a rare moment where chess is popular in the United States. There are two big factors drivin...
What Happened to Europe's Economy After the Black Death
04 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
It's been pointed out that, after the Black Death in Europe, real wages surged because there was suc...
This Is How Prejudice Can Hinder the Economy
31 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Economics is all about improving living standards, but rarely does the dismal science deal with soci...
Goldman's Jan Hatzius on the Lessons Learned in 2020
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
2020 has been an absolutely extraordinary year for the economy. In March, we saw the fastest economi...
Michael Saylor, the CEO Who Turned a Software Company Into a Bitcoin Company
24 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This past summer, the business intelligence software company MicroStrategy made waves when it put so...
Camille Fournier on Building Tech at Two Sigma
21 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We talk a lot about quantitative trading on the podcast, but typically from a rather big picture per...
Apple Is at the Cutting Edge of a Revolution in Chips
17 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On a recent episode of Odd Lots, we talked about Intel, and how the former dominant American semicon...
This Is the Macro Picture Going Into 2021
14 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's obviously been an extraordinary year for markets and the economy for reasons that don't need st...
Why Africa Borrowed Billions of Dollars From China
10 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's no secret that some African nations went on a borrowing spree in recent years, tapping both int...
Why the IMF Changed Its Views on Capital Controls
07 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For years, the IMF was generally of the view that free trade was good, and that open capital flows w...
Former ECB Chief Economist Peter Praet on What's Next For Central Banks
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With developed economies still operating well below pre-crisis levels, central banks face substantia...
How the Number One U.S. Semiconductor Company Stumbled
30 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For years, Intel has been the pre-eminent U.S. semiconductor company. But lately, the company has st...
How Money Became A Form Of Social Media
26 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are many similarities between cryptocurrencies and social networks. And the rise of payment ap...
Inigo Fraser-Jenkins and Aaron Brown Debate The Future Of Quant Investing
23 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Traditional quant strategies that try to screen for stocks that are "cheap" have had an extremely ro...
The Episode That Turned Tracy Into A Bitcoin Bull
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Bitcoin has been on a tear lately, but it's been a bit unclear as to what's driving it. But whatever...
This Is How People Really Feel About Paying Taxes
16 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The politics of taxes are always fraught. In theory, everyone wants to pay less of them and bristle ...
A Political Reporter Argues That Wall Street Doesn't Get DC
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Investors have always had to pay attention to what's going on in Washington DC, but this year it's b...
This Is The NYSE's Plan To Win More Direct Listings
09 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This year's stock market boom has coincided with a boom in new listings. There have been plenty of I...
Michael Mauboussin On Valuing Intangible Assets
05 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Measuring a company's book value is a classic practice among investors seeking to understand how muc...
A Forensic Accountant On Why Chinese Internet Companies Are So Tough To Analyze
02 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The IPO of Ant Financial will go down as one of the most extraordinary deals of all time. And in gen...
Lessons From Ruth Krivoy, the Former Head of Venezuela's Central Bank
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The COVID-19 crisis has pushed central banks around the world into uncharted territory. Typically wh...
JPMorgan's Josh Younger on Rate Derivatives and Volatility Ahead of the Election
26 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For months now, traders have been positioning for a major volatility spike around the November elect...
Benoît Cœuré On Central Bank Digital Currencies And The Future Of Monetary Policy
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Central banks around the world are increasingly launching pilot projects to explore the possibility ...
Rep. Ro Khanna On Why Democrats Should Cut A Stimulus Deal With The White House
20 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With just two weeks until the election, talks over a stimulus deal remain ongoing, with negotiations...
A Volatility Arbitrage Trader On What Markets Are Saying Right Now
19 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's been an extraordinary year for traders of volatility. We had the crisis, we had this incredible...
How Tobacco Became One Of The Greatest Investments In History
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For over a century, tobacco stocks have been among the greatest investments in history, consistently...
Michael Hudson On Why The US Risks Becoming The Next Greece
12 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, you heard a lot of talk about the US becoming like Greece...
What It Takes To Win At Quant Investing
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Interest in quantitative investing strategies continues to grow; however, as the space gets more com...
An IMF Economist On The Challenge Of Finding The Neutral Rate Of Interest
05 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the guiding lights of Fed policy over the years has been the so-called Neutral Rate of Intere...
Volatility Suppression Turned The Entire Economy Into One Big Carry Trade
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In a carry trade, an investor borrows money cheaply to buy an asset that yields more. As long as not...
How All Financial Markets Turned Into The Same Big Trade
28 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
These days it seems like all financial markets are the same big trade. A gold chart looks like a Tes...
This Is What Happened When They Tried To Fix Journalism Using Blockchain
24 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Back in 2017, during the Bitcoin boom, there were a number of different attempts to use blockchain t...
A Top Crypto Exchange CEO Explains Why The 2020 Boom Is Different
21 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Crypto is hot this year again. In 2020, we've not only seen a substantial rally across a lot of diff...
How Traders Used Google Searches To See The Economic Recovery In Real Time
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The use of so-called "alternative data" has been gathering attention for some time. Investors have b...
How SoftBank And Robinhooders Added Fuel To The Stock Market Boom
14 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most intriguing subplots to the 2020 stock market boom has been the speculative fervor wi...
Why Blank Check Companies Are The Hottest Thing This Year
10 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
SPACs have been around a long time. The basic premise is that a group of people raise a bunch of mon...
How A New Type Of Money Helped Cause The Great Financial Crisis
07 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's fun to talk about what money is, but often it's hard to connect the dots and make it actually r...
Paul McCulley: We Are "Unambiguously" On The Verge Of A Profound Change In The Economy
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Paul McCulley is a former Managing Director at PIMCO and a legend of the industry, having helped coi...
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari On The Historic Challenges For Monetary Policy
31 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Fed is facing historic challenges for two reasons. The first is the coronavirus and the task of ...
The Father Of CMBS Says We’re In ‘Uncharted Territory’ When It Comes To Valuing Real Estate
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
There are some sectors of the real estate market, such as suburban residential housing, that are doi...
The CEO of a $1.4 Billion REIT Explains The Surprising Year In Housing
24 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When COVID hit, people had visions of a plunge in home prices and a massive wave of evictions. So fa...
Rep. Ayanna Pressley On How The Fed Can Fight Racial Inequality
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, Black Americans have experienced persistently higher levels of unemployment th...