Odd Lots

Zichen Wang is the writer of the Pekingnology newsletter, which translates important speeches and articles from China into English, and contextualizes them for Western readers. Over the past year, he's been a master's degree student at Princeton University, although he's recently returned home to resume his career at a think tank in China. His stint in the US obviously came at a very interesting time, both due to the rising US-Chi...

After the GFC, there was a lot of angst over the fact that so much effort and brainpower went into designing complex derivatives, and other financial instruments. Not only was this seen as wasteful, the complexity was deemed to be the heart of the crisis, and therefore bad. But all these years later, looking back, how bad is financial complexity really? What do things look like from the perspective of 2025. On this episode we're jo...

Somehow, the American consumer remains quite strong. Despite higher interest rates, tariffs, general economic uncertainty and so forth, people are continuing to spend. And yet there are some pockets of weakness that you can observe, especially if you look at delinquency data for various types of credit. But even here the patterns aren’t totally obvious, as it doesn’t break down nicely among prime vs. non-prime borrowers...

Back in May, President Trump announced this big plan whereby American tech giants would participate in major AI projects in both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The announcement has created divisions within the White House, and more generally among people who are thinking about the intersection of artificial intelligence and geopolitics. One argument is that this is great news geopolitically, because it gives American te...

The Trump administration seems to have a lot of big ideas about reshaping America, including its economy. We've seen the unveiling (and delaying) of sweeping tariffs aimed at boosting US manufacturing. The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' is currently working its way through Congress and features a lot of supply-side economic ideas, including an extension of tax cuts. So do all of these things work together to boost growth? What happens if th...

The focus of Trump's trade policies is clearly China. There are tariffs on everyone, of course, but it's the growing Chinese manufacturing might, and the various perceived risks associated with that, which have catalyzed this impulse to rethink how America trades with the rest of the world. But can the US actually move the manufacturing center of gravity? On this episode we welcome back Harvard Professor Ricardo Hausmann. We've had...

These days, it's common to talk about the emergence of a New Cold War that exists between the US and China. It's debatable whether or not this is a useful framing. But in order to answer the question, it requires that you have some conception of what the original Cold War actually was. Vladislav Zubok, a professor at the London School of Economics, has a new book out on exactly this question. In The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991...

Bloomberg Businessweek brings you a smart and fun chat show about all things...business. Hosted by award-winning business and economics journalists Max Chafkin (author of The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power) and Stacey Vanek Smith (former co-host of NPR’s Planet Money and reporter for Marketplace), Everybody's Business is powered by the unparalleled sources and reporters who bring you Busin...

Egg prices have come down a lot since their recent record and bird flu has largely faded from the headlines. But the epidemic is still raging and, per one farmer, risks becoming endemic in the US. Glenn Hickman is president of Hickman's Egg Ranch in Arizona, one of the largest egg producers in the US. You might remember him from our series last year, Beak Capitalism, in which we explored some of the thorniest issues facing the US e...

We're about two months on from Liberation Day, and there's still a lot of confusion about what's going on with global trade. Some countries, like China, have been granted delays from tariffs. But other trade restrictions, like the 50% tariff on foreign steel, have come into effect. So what exactly is going on and what impact is this having on the physical flow of goods into America? In this episode, we catch up with Gene Seroka, ex...

To some extent, at least in big cities, it feels as though the cost of housing is enveloping almost everything else in terms of politics right now. Booming areas that drive GDP have gotten incredibly expensive in large part thanks to rent, and even the well paid residents are forced to turn over a significant share of their income over to their landlord. So can anything be done about it? Can rent come down by liberalizing supply an...

President Trump wants Apple to make iPhones in America. The company itself has talked about — and to some extent already has been — moving more of its production to other countries, like India. But in reality, Apple remains deeply, deeply enmeshed in the Chinese supply chain. In fact, the rise of Apple, and the iPhone specifically, is the ultimate example of the link between the American and Chinese economies. And while...

What is a currency? This turns out to be one of those questions we just kind of skip over because we don't have clear answers to it (and because economists often like to skip over these foundational things). This special episode of the Odd Lots podcast was recorded as part of Princeton University's “How to Write the Biography of a ...

We're told over and over again that the one "free lunch" in investing is diversification, and that you can improve your returns over time simply by investing in a wider range of assets. This is textbook modern finance. And yet over the past several years this hasn't been the case. An investor would have done great (with the occasional hiccups) just by investing in US stocks. What's more, even within US stocks, investors should have...

Michael Cembalest has been an investment analyst for almost 40 years and his research notes have drawn a cult following on Wall Street. He's known for going super deep into a wide range of topics, like energy and healthcare. And lately he's been writing a lot about AI, with a particular interest in figuring out whether all the investment in data centers and compute will translate into actual profits. On this episode, we talk to the...

Multi-strategy hedge funds have been having a moment with big asset allocators pouring billions of dollars into names like Millennium and Citadel. And given all the growth, multi-strat funds have also been battling each other for talent. But why, exactly, do big investors seem to love multi-strats so much? What actually makes a multi-strat good to invest in? And how do fees and compensation work? In this episode, we speak with Rona...

We're just a month away from the hotly-contested Democratic primary for New York City Mayor. And one of the candidates -- Queens assemblyman Zohran Mamdani -- is running on a somewhat unusual platform. Endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, he's proposing rent freezes, universal childcare, higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, free buses, and city-run grocery stores. In this conversation, we talk to the would-be ...

This week the big story in markets is the selloff in bonds. Yields on benchmark 10-year US Treasuries jumped 20 basis points from last Friday’s low, while the 30-year rate is back above 5%. Meanwhile, 30-year Japanese government bonds clocked their highest yield since records began in 1999. And rates on UK gilts, German bunds, and Australian bonds are also rising. To make matters even more unusual, US Treasury yields are goin...

When we think about the prospect of deglobalization (whatever that means) we often think about it in terms of the goods economy. Supply chains get rerouted. Manufacturing becomes more localized, and possibly less efficient. But changes to the global world order also have implications for Wall Street, and the world of dealmaking. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Scott Bok, the longtime former chairman and CEO of the inv...