Markets are often said to be "headline-driven," but that cliché has rarely felt more true than it does right now. A single tweet or Truth Social post can send prices sharply higher or lower, and investors (especially in the rates market) have been forced to rapidly reposition in response. But even as volatility has increased, traditional safe haven destinations like gold haven't been rallying. So how are big accounts actually trading this market? In this episode, we bring back Ozan Tarman, vice ...
Mar 26, 2026•40 min
Everyone knows by now that war in Iran is curbing the flow of oil around the world. But oil isn't just a gasoline and jet fuel story, of course. It's also a crucial feedstock for a bunch of petrochemicals, including the building blocks of a variety of plastics. And we're already seeing polyethylene prices start to surge, with some producers in Asia declaring force majeure and curbing their output. So how much of the world's petrochemicals supply is now in danger? And what does it mean for the fu...
Mar 25, 2026•53 min
Nobody knows when or if AI will lead to mass displacement of white-collar work. But the anxiety is clearly here now, and there's very little evidence that our politicians are taking it seriously. Of course, there are at least two questions operating at once here. The first is whether or not AI really poses a significant threat to the existing labor market. And then the second one is about the correct policy response. This was the subject of a recent Odd Lots episode recorded live at SXSW in Aust...
Mar 24, 2026•55 min
Dubai has become a huge destination for the rich, with an influx of high-net-worth residents driving up property prices and boosting the UAE's tax revenues in recent years. And of course, Gulf countries more broadly have a lot of oil wealth that they've ploughed into everything from real estate to private credit and tech. But the situation with Iran looks set to test that prosperity. In recent weeks, Iran has been attacking Gulf energy infrastructure and even launched drone strikes on residentia...
Mar 23, 2026•55 min
Here's Why is Bloomberg’s short explainer podcast, where we take one big news story and break it down in just a few minutes with help from our experts across the newsroom. We're dropping into your feed with a special episode featuring Joe Weisenthal, who joined us to discuss why the Iran war is prompting a safe haven rethink. In times of geopolitical turmoil, investors look for somewhere safe to put their money. US President Donald Trump's trade war helped to fuel a record rally for gold in 2025...
Mar 21, 2026•12 min
The war in Iran has already lasted longer than many people might have expected. There was an initial assumption, after oil prices started surging, that President Trump could just declare victory at any moment. But that hasn't happened, and the longer this goes on, the more damage is being done to the region's energy infrastructure. Already a key gas plant in Qatar has been damaged so badly that it's expected to take it years to repair. On this episode, we speak with return guest Gregory Brew, a ...
Mar 20, 2026•53 min
America’s farmers can’t seem to catch a break. Years of thin margins and rising costs have already stretched them to the limit. And now, war with Iran is making things even harder. The conflict is driving up global energy and fertilizer prices, pushing producers into tough decisions about what to plant and at what price to sell. At the same time, farmers are still dealing with the impact of tariffs, rising land costs, and stiff competition from agricultural powerhouses like Brazil. On this episo...
Mar 19, 2026•48 min
Mostly, the world has been watching the price of oil skyrocket amid the war in Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But there's more than just oil that comes out of the region. Qatar is home to the world's largest natural gas field, and for now, it's been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. Not only has Gulf gas supply been cut off, there's also damage to the core infrastructure, which will take time to repair. Meanwhile, the US is rapidly becoming a natural g...
Mar 18, 2026•45 min
The war in Iran has been fought almost entirely in the skies, with both offensive missiles, as well as anti-missile defense systems. But the math is brutal. The war in Ukraine has already put a dent in American stockpiles, and now it is proving costly to protect American bases and their allies in the region against Iranian drones. On this episode, we speak with Tom Karako, a senior fellow and director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a top def...
Mar 16, 2026•44 min
In the wake of the war in Iran, oil prices have shot up for everyone. But not all oil is exactly equal. And, obviously, a lot of Iranian oil goes to China specifically. Furthermore, because Iran’s oil is sanctioned, a lot of it winds up at China’s so-called “teapot” refineries, which tend to be smaller and owned by independent companies. On the other hand, China has famously been building up its strategic petroleum stockpiles for years, and due to the rise of electric vehicles, they may have les...
Mar 13, 2026•43 min
We tend to think of warfare in two distinct arenas: the physical and the digital. Increasingly, however, those lines are blurring. Last week, Iran launched drone strikes on data centers in the UAE and Bahrain. Israel has reportedly been hacking traffic lights in Tehran, and this week brought a suspected Iranian cyberattack on US medical device company Stryker, all underscoring long-held fears that hackers could take aim at vital physical infrastructure. On this episode, we speak with Matt Suiche...
Mar 12, 2026•49 min
We all know that the war with Iran has sent oil prices spiking. But it’s also pushing up the cost of all sorts of chemicals, including fertilizers like urea, ammonia and other nitrogen products that are essential for food production. This is all happening at the worst possible time — just before the spring planting season, when fertilizer is most needed. And while farmers have seen higher spot prices for things like urea before, notably back in 2022, there are already signs that this crisis migh...
Mar 11, 2026•31 min
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 more extreme. And if the war is prolonged, or if the Strait of Hormuz continues to be functionally blocked, then this could just be the start of an even bigger spike. On this episode, we speak with Rory Johnston, the author of the Commodity Context newsletter. Rory is typically a very level headed guy, and not a doomer at all. And even he is quite ...
Mar 10, 2026•37 min
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 that retail investors want to participate in hot names like OpenAI and SpaceX, and that tokenizing private equity would allow this to happen. Right after our episode though, a number of companies expressed frustration at the idea, saying that they were not voluntarily participating in the plan. So where do things stand now? And how is Robinhood th...
Mar 09, 2026•51 min
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 dominant idea in the markets is that AI is so powerful that all kinds of legacy businesses — particularly software — could go to zero. So where does the truth lie? And what now for AI valuations? On this episode, recorded live at the On Air podcast festival in Brooklyn on February 25, we catch up again with Henry Blodget, the former Wall Street analy...
Mar 07, 2026•45 min
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 anything to get through the Strait of Hormuz. But it’s not just oil that moves through this key waterway — there are plenty of other goods, including metals and ingredients for fertilizer getting potentially constrained. It’s also not just the risk of violence itself that’s an issue for shipping companies, there’s also the question of how cargoes get in...
Mar 06, 2026•30 min
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 through the 2008 financial crisis. In his new memoir, Streetwise: Getting To and Through Goldman Sachs , he writes about his journey from public housing in Brooklyn to the pinnacle of Wall Street. So what's he up to now? And how does he see markets and finance today? In this episode, we talk about deglobalization and Wall Street, the threats AI and te...
Mar 05, 2026•48 min
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 traders moving even faster, executing thousands of trades per second. Over the years, the need for speed got so intense that competing firms would aim to get their own systems closer and closer to the exchange's computers, so as to minimize the length of the wires and get their trades in even faster. How did this happen? And how does this change the natu...
Mar 02, 2026•56 min
'Bloomberg This Weekend' features unique conversations on business, news, lifestyle and culture. Join David Gura, Christina Ruffini and Lisa Mateo Saturdays and Sundays for discussions with business leaders, lawmakers and cultural icons. Watch the show LIVE on Bloomberg Television from 7AM-10AM Eastern Time. Listen to the show LIVE on Bloomberg Radio from 7AM-10AM Eastern Time. Listen to the Podcast for the best conversations from the show. Subscribe on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podca...
Mar 01, 2026•1 min
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 is the founder of Citrini Research, which published a piece a week ago titled, “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis.” It was not written as a forecast of an imminent disaster, but rather as a scenario analysis in which AI capabilities lead to widespread white collar job losses, triggering a deep downturn, and a financial crisis. Nonetheless, the pie...
Feb 28, 2026•43 min
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs were illegal . And now basically every importer who paid those tariffs will be rushing to get their refunds. But will businesses actually get paid? And how do they file a claim? And should consumers get refunded if a business passed the cost of the tariffs on to them? On this episode, we're rejoined by regular Odd Lots guest Ryan Petersen, the CEO of Flexport, a major freight forwarding company. We discuss how the ...
Feb 27, 2026•45 min
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 about new housing or transportation, the city is a famously expensive place to do construction. There are reports of subway elevators costing $100 million per station . Public bathrooms end up costing millions as well. One driver of costs is insurance, which is a major national issue, but particularly acute in NYC, with costs as a share of a given co...
Feb 26, 2026•47 min
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 newsletter is incredibly popular. Now, she's putting her name on consumer goods, recently launching a new line of high-end jarred tomato sauce called, appropriately, A Very Good Sauce, which she sells direct online. So what has she learned about the consumer goods industry and its supply chain? On this episode, she explains why she entered the space, ...
Feb 23, 2026•54 min
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has certain ideas that make mainstream economists' head explode. Anything in the ballpark of rent control, specifically, is widely derided by defenders of the orthodoxy. But how did the orthodoxy become the orthodoxy? And how did the heterodoxy become the heterodoxy? On this episode, we speak with Jamee Moudud, a professor of economics at Sarah Lawrence College and author of the new book, Legal and Political Foundations of Capitalism . His scholarship sits at the interse...
Feb 21, 2026•56 min
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, the big story is that big, thriving companies feel less and less pressure to go public. In a different era, private giants like Databricks and Stripe might've IPO'd a long time ago. So what's changed? Why are companies comfortable staying private for so long? On this episode, we speak with David George, a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, who ...
Feb 20, 2026•49 min
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 models will pull the rug out from this industry. But even before these AI fears, software companies were seeing their growth slow. So how does the business actually work? And more importantly, what types of companies will actually survive the “SaaSpocalypse”? (Or maybe “the CaSaaStrophe”?) On this episode, we speak with Jared Sleeper, a longtime software inve...
Feb 19, 2026•49 min
For years, DRAM -- or Dynamic Random Access Memory -- was kind of a sleepy, commoditized aspect of chip industry. Growth was steady, but modest, and prices just generally drifted lower. Suddenly all that's changed. AI has created voracious demand for DRAM and consumer facing companies are being forced to either curtail supply or raise prices due to exploding costs. But what is it about AI that consumes so much memory, and when will the market rebalance itself? On this episode, we speak with Ray ...
Feb 16, 2026•45 min
It’s an open secret that the Chinese government has engaged in a global campaign to acquire intellectual property from foreign rivals. At the center of that campaign is the Ministry of State Security, China’s elusive intelligence agency. The US has apprehended hundreds of people accused of giving information to the MSS, but the agency’s inner workings have been a mystery — until now. Today, we’re bringing you Episode 1 of The Sixth Bureau, a limited-run series from The Big Take. The series follo...
Feb 15, 2026•13 min
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 Reserve to get back to its 2% target. In other words, people generally agree on the direction, but disagree on the speed. But our guest on this episode violently disagrees with the consensus direction. Peterson Institute President Adam Posen thinks inflation will be back at 4% by the end of the year. He first unveiled his thesis in a piece co-written wit...
Feb 13, 2026•57 min
We are rapidly entering a world in which there are odds on virtually everything. During the recent Super Bowl, the big prediction market platforms didn't just offer bets on the game itself, but also on more exotic facets, such as the first song that Bad Bunny would sing, even who would join Bad Bunny in the performance. And while a lot of people thinks this looks like gambling, it's actually regulated by the CFTC, an agency created in the 1970s to regulate derivatives. On this episode, we speak ...
Feb 12, 2026•50 min
