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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The last time the World Cup came to the US was 1994. Before then, the World Cup was an enormously popular event with surprisingly limited commercial significance; the 1990 tournament in Italy, for instance, lost money for broadcasters. But that all changed in 1994, when American companies sought to make their mark in the form of advertisements and sponsorships: firms like McDonalds, Mastercard, and General Motors saw the potential to reach a global audience through one of the world's most watche...
Grace Shao, an independent AI researcher, offers an insider's view of China's rapidly evolving AI industry. She details how open-source models became a pragmatic business decision for Chinese labs, driving unique business models and R&D sharing. Shao also highlights China's hardware manufacturing advantage, the government's top-down approach to AI as an economic driver, and the distinctive cultural reception of technology compared to the US.
This panel delves into how journalists and analysts navigate the AI-infected, high-pressure market environment. Guests debate fears of an AI bubble, potential mass job loss, and whether Silicon Valley leaders are truly concerned about society's future. They also explore AI's ability to mimic human voice and personality, and how writers can maintain their unique value and hedge against an AI-driven future.
There’s a lot to unpack with AI right now — everything from its potential impacts on the labor market and society to more extreme questions about existential risk. Anthropic, which builds frontier models like Mythos, Fable, and Claude, is actively grappling with these issues, including whether governments should limit AI development. Just last week, the Trump administration forced Anthropic to block foreign access to its two leading models. In this episode, we speak with Jack Clark (co-founder a...
Jeremy Grantham, co-founder and long-term strategist of GMO, has a long history of calling bubbles. As he recounts in his new memoir, The Making of a Permabear: The Perils of Long-Term Investing in a Short-Term World , that includes spotting the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, which some people see as analogous to the current excitement over AI. And when it comes to today's market, there are a lot of signs of frothiness you could point to. In this episode, we speak to Grantham about how he se...
An interim deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz offers relief, but Asia’s economic woes are far from over. Beyond the chokepoint, the conflict has forced long-lasting shifts in Asia’s food and energy flows. On today’s Big Take Asia podcast, Oanh Ha joins Odd Lots co-hosts Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal to discuss why Asia is reeling from the conflict and what the “new normal” looks like for global supply chains. Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News s...
This episode features Carmen Li, CEO of Compute Exchange and Silicon Data, discussing her work in building a futures market for GPUs. She explains how her companies are creating a GPU price index and a spot marketplace, drawing parallels to the oil market. The conversation covers challenges like standardizing compute, ensuring GPU quality, and the process of gathering market data to enable hedging and speculation in this rapidly evolving sector.
Anjney Midha, former a16z partner and Anthropic's first investor, explains how his new company AMP PBC aims to build a standardized compute grid. He highlights the current market's fragmentation, low GPU utilization due to spiky research demand, and how software solutions can significantly improve efficiency and lower costs. Midha also emphasizes the importance of verifiable feedback in AI progress and the need for technical literacy among leaders to navigate the "jagged frontier" of AI capabilities.
The hay market is not a transparent market: It is very fractured by types of hay, whether it is alfalfa or clover hay. There are a few opaque, illiquid markets like this — scrap metal for instance — that require some hands-on investigating to figure out. Aiden Johnson is co-founder and CEO of the HayWire newsletter, which aims to make the hay market more transparent: He and co-founder Cole Glasgow use an AI model to mine public data sources — like USDA reports on auction prices across different ...
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...
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 su...
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, Susquehan...
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 chi...
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon explores the transformative power of AI in banking, highlighting its potential for productivity gains without causing a 'white collar wipeout.' He stresses the increasing importance of human connection and emotional intelligence in a tech-driven world, drawing on his own career experiences and Goldman's long-term client relationships. Solomon also delves into current capital market dynamics, discussing major equity raises for AI and the ongoing debate around public versus private markets, alongside the critical need for robust cybersecurity.
Discover the intricate, multi-trillion-dollar market of commodity finance, which underpins global trade but often goes unnoticed until crises hit. Lewis Hart of Brown Brothers Harriman explains how lines of credit secure inventory, how price risk is hedged (or not, for unhedgeable commodities), and the critical role of due diligence and borrower character. The discussion delves into the impact of geopolitical events like the Strait of Hormuz closure, highlighting how the industry tracks collateral, adapts to new trade routes, and maintains resilience amidst major supply chain shocks.
Tim Queeney, author of "Rope," discusses how this seemingly simple technology underpins human development. The discussion delves into the physics of rope strength, its ancient origins, and its pivotal role in maritime history, from whaling to the industrialization of naval power. The episode also looks to the future, exploring the concept of a space elevator and the potential of graphene to make such ambitious projects a reality, emphasizing rope's continuous evolution.
This episode features Gita Gopinath explaining the global surge in interest rates, attributing it to a confluence of factors including alarming public debt levels, persistent fiscal deficits, and the AI boom's unprecedented capital requirements. She delves into the "crowding out" effect of AI investment on sovereign bonds and questions the sustainability of "big lasting state support" (BLISS) that has bolstered economies through recent shocks. Gopinath cautions that policymakers may face difficult choices and unorthodox measures as fiscal capacity diminishes, with the future economic outlook heavily reliant on AI's ability to deliver significant productivity growth.
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...
This episode explores the business of London pubs with Oisin Rogers and Chef Ashley Palmer-Watts of The Devonshire. Publican Oisin details the cultural significance, evolution, and management philosophy of pubs, including the impact of the smoking ban. Chef Ashley reveals the scientific precision behind pouring a perfect Guinness, the economics of menu design, and how The Devonshire balances high-quality dining with an inclusive, community-focused experience amidst rising costs.
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 Norm...
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 hard...
Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras, details how his company's massive, wafer-scale chips achieve blazing fast AI inference, significantly outperforming traditional GPUs. He explains the complex engineering challenges overcome and Cerebras's strategic focus on the booming inference market. The discussion also covers the economics of AI compute, the competition between open and closed-source models, supply chain hurdles, and the implications of semiconductor export controls and data sovereignty for corporate users.
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...
Bloomberg columnists Javier Blas and Lorcan Roche Kelly break down the current commodity price landscape, explaining why oil isn't soaring to $200 despite supply shocks, how global food supplies face delayed shortages, and the true impact of Europe's energy crisis. They also discuss the UAE's departure from OPEC, the future of the fertilizer market, the dynamics behind high beef prices, and how consumer trends are reshaping the dairy industry, particularly cheese production.
John Collison, co-founder of Stripe, delves into agentic commerce, explaining how AI agents can perform transactions for consumers and businesses, from buying domains to grocery shopping. He highlights its potential to reduce friction, enable new forms of product discovery beyond keyword search, and create a more dynamic entrepreneurial landscape. Collison also addresses critical debates on advertising's future, the monetization of internet content, and the complexities of ensuring agent reliability and liability.
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 a...
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...
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 o...
Megan Greene, an external member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, delves into the complexities of setting monetary policy amid a series of unprecedented supply shocks, from COVID to geopolitical conflicts. She explains why the UK economy remains weak yet faces persistent inflation, highlighting the limitations of demand-focused central bank tools in a supply-driven environment. Greene also provides insight into the MPC's decision-making process, emphasizing scenario analysis and the challenges of proactive judgment in a radically uncertain world, and the ongoing debate about the future of central banking.
Mariana Mazzucato, a leading expert on public sector investment, outlines her "mission economy" framework, which shifts focus from merely fixing market failures to actively shaping markets and driving innovation to address grand challenges. She critiques the over-reliance on consultants, emphasizing the need to rebuild state capacity and dynamic capabilities within government. The discussion also covers the ethical governance of AI, advocating for pre-distributive policies and systemic thinking to ensure technology serves public purpose.
