These days, when you think of trading, you think of people sitting at a desk with a bunch of monitors, watching charts, and maybe making decisions based on algorithmic signals. Of course if you imagine a trader a few decades ago, you think of someone in a big open pit shouting loudly and writing things down on actual physical pieces of paper. So what was that scene really like? On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Cameron Crise, a Bloomberg macro strategist, who used to trade currency ...
Mar 19, 2018•36 min
For years, nobody seemed particularly concerned about inflation. Outside of a few blips, in the wake of the financial crisis, people have become accustomed to low inflation, and central banks providing ample stimulus to the economy. But suddenly that's changing. There seem to be hints that the macro backdrop is shifting, and that has investors on edge. So why the shift and what's going on? On this week's Odd Lots, we speak with Michael Ashton of Enduring Investments, a specialist in analyzing th...
Mar 12, 2018•35 min
In theory, people should want to know accurate facts about the state of the world. In practice, it's not so simple. Because of the way we evolved, and how our brains work, there are often things that we prioritize above the truth (such as fitting in with some tribal identity). On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak with NYU professor Jay Van Bavel, about a new paper he co-authored titled "The Partisan Brain: An Identity-Based Model of Political Belief." It explains how political ideology lead...
Mar 05, 2018•26 min
Decrypted returns on March 6th with a brand new season. Here's a sneak peek of what's in store. We'll be releasing new episodes every Tuesday starting next week. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 27, 2018•2 min
In the 1970s, NYC teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. This crisis lead to the dismantling of the city's generous social safety net. On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Kim Phillips-Fein, historian and author of "Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics." She walks us through what happened then, and what lessons it holds for fiscal politics today. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 26, 2018•31 min
In recent years, one of the easiest ways to make money in this market has been to bet on low volatility. Up until recently, markets have been exceptionally tranquil, and trades predicated on that tranquility continuing have made a fortune. But two of the most popular vehicles for making that trade, XIV and SVXY got obliterated in one day in early February. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Pravit Chintawongvanich, the head of Derivatives Strategy at Macro Risk Advisors ...
Feb 19, 2018•28 min
This month, Bloomberg is excited to bring you a brand new show. Every Friday on What'd You Miss This Week, we'll feature the most interesting interviews from Bloomberg's daily market close show, "What'd You Miss" hosted by Scarlet Fu, Julia Chatterley and Joe Weisenthal. We want to take you beyond the headlines and bring you a unique perspective on the week's top stories, and those you may just have missed. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. Be sure to subscribe now, so you don't mis...
Feb 12, 2018•1 min
Anyone who watched poker on TV during the golden age of coverage a few years ago is familiar with Annie Duke. She's one of the most famous poker players of the era, and is one of the winningest women poker players of all time, with 38 money finishes at the World Series of Poker. She's been retired from poker for a few years now, but she has a new book called "Thinking In Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All The Facts." On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, Annie talks...
Feb 12, 2018•32 min
Quantitative finance is red hot. These days, basically everyone (banks, hedge funds etc.) is hiring mathematicians and coders. So what differentiates one quant shop from any other? On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Alfred Spector, the CTO of Two Sigma Investments, which is one of the most successful quant firms in the world. Spector is a computer scientist who previously did long stints at both Google and IBM. He tells us about why Two Sigma spent resources to create it...
Feb 06, 2018•29 min
If you cover the economy from New York City or Abu Dhabi, it's easy to get caught up in a media bubble. But the U.S. economy is obviously not a monolith. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Jeff Korzenik, the Chief Investment Strategist at Fifth Third Private bank, a major bank in the Midwestern states. During our discussion, we talk about the ramifications from the opioid crisis as well as the Trump administration on the economy and the markets. See omnystudio.com/listen...
Jan 29, 2018•27 min
When we think about financial assets, we usually think of their price as being derived from some set of intrinsic characteristics. A stock price may be a function of growth, margins, interest rates, and a few other things. For government bonds, we might say that inflation and growth are the big components. It's easy to forget that financial assets are goods sold on a market consisting of humans with their own demand and consumption needs. On this week's Odd Lots, we speak to Amlan Roy, Global Ch...
Jan 22, 2018•25 min
For centuries, markets were highly-personalized things, often controlled by select groups of people who traded based on long-established and closely-knit relationships. Closed networks -- such as merchant guilds in 16th century Europe -- could ensure trust between buyers and sellers by pushing out bad actors. But then, something happened that would eventually become the foundation of all modern markets. In the 1500s, new trade routes and the arrival of the printing press helped erode the power o...
Jan 15, 2018•28 min
We talk a lot about bubbles on this podcast. Often we talk about them from the perspective of a trader or speculator. But what about the people whose lives get caught up directly in the craziness? On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to Bloomberg's own Dash Bennett, who worked for an internet company right during the peak of the mania in early 2000. Dash describes the incredible signs of excesses that he saw at the beginning and the bleak way it all ended when everyone lost t...
Jan 08, 2018•27 min
On last week's episode of Odd Lots, Bloomberg's Chris Nagi and Matt Boesler gave us their takes for the biggest stories of the past year. So naturally, for this week's episode, we look ahead. Chris and Matt are back in the studio to give us their predictions for what we'll be talking about in 2018. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Jan 02, 2018•14 min
The year is over, and now's the time to look back at the big stories of the past year. On this week's episode, we're joined by Chris Nagi and Matt Boesler of Bloomberg News to discuss what they saw as the dominant themes of 2017. For Nagi, it was the relentless decline in market volatility (despite a year of remarkable headlines) and for Boesler it was the persistent shortfall in inflation, and the challenge that that's posing to traditional economic models. See omnystudio.com/listener for priva...
Dec 26, 2017•13 min
Algorithms. People talk about them all the time, particularly in relation to markets. But who actually designs them, and what do they do? On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak with Frank Pasquale, a law professor at the University of Maryland, and the author of "The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information." Pasquale, who has been following the growing importance of algorithms for several years explains the various ways they're shaping our li...
Dec 18, 2017•31 min
When we think of computer-driven or "quant" investing, we often think fast moves, algorithms making buy and sell orders at incredibly short timeframes. So in theory, the likes of great long-term investors, like Warren Buffett, should be safe from the robot revolution. But maybe not so fast! On this week's Odd Lots podcast, we speak to John Alberg of Euclidean Technologies and Zachary Lipton of Carnegie Mellon, about their new research on the next generation of quant investing. Alberg and Lipton ...
Dec 11, 2017•34 min
There are two popular schools of thought with regards to how markets work. There's the efficient markets hypothesis (EMH) which says that it's basically impossible to beat the market, because all information is completely priced in at all times (more or less). On the other side is an increasingly popular behavioral view which argues that various human emotions and biases are always creating situations that aren't justified by the data. On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we speak to ...
Dec 04, 2017•28 min
Money goes where it's treated best. That simple truth is a big reason why more and more money—trillions, in fact—flows into a powerful, low-cost tool that's quietly transformed investing in recent years. Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, let you invest in everything from the stock market to gold like never before. This podcast will demystify them—and delight you in the process. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nov 28, 2017•3 min
This month we saw a small sell-off in markets that got big attention. How did we get to the point where a 1 percent fall in the S&P 500 over the course of a week is huge news? And are we about to enter a time when it becomes much more normal to see markets fall? Matt King, global head of credit strategy at Citigroup Inc., has never shied away from the big picture questions. In this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, he predicts we'll see more wobbles in the future, and walks us through some of...
Nov 27, 2017•26 min
In this age of algorithms and quants, you hear less and less about good old stock picking. You know, like the style of investing associated with Warren Buffet or Benjamin Graham. But that doesn't mean you can't still dive into a balance sheet or cash flow statement in order to divine a stock's true worth. On this week's Odd Lots we speak to Aswath Damodaran, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, and the foremost expert on stock valuation. He explains his general approach to valuing stoc...
Nov 20, 2017•31 min
Most asset classes move in a fairly straightforward manner. They're either going up or down at any given time. But when it comes to currencies it's not that simple. Since they're all traded against each other (the pound vs. the dollar, the pound vs. the euro, the pound vs. the yen) there's always some rising and some falling at any given time. Everything's relative. So what drives these relative movements, and how do traders decide what bets to place? On this week's episode of the Odd Lots podca...
Nov 13, 2017•32 min
You can't go a day without hearing about ICOs or Initial Coin Offerings. By taking advantage of a regulatory gap and buzz surrounding cryptocurrencies, companies are raising millions of dollars by launching their own coins. But what's the point of these coins? What are they supposed to do? And what are the pitfalls? On this week's podcast, we talk to Elaine Ou, a blockchain engineer at Global Financial Access and a Bloomberg View contributor about the economics of ICOs, and how previous attempts...
Nov 06, 2017•21 min
Investors are constantly poring over income statements from big companies to figure out whether they should buy or sell the business's stock. But should they bother? In this week's episode, Joe and Tracy talk to Feng Gu, a professor at SUNY Buffalo, and Baruch Lev, a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business, about why the way we account for a company's earnings might be massively outdated. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Oct 30, 2017•26 min
By now, almost everyone in financial markets is familiar with ETFs (exchange-traded funds), and how they allow investors to move quickly in and out of a basket of stocks with a few clicks. But perhaps people don't realize quite how revolutionary they are, and how much of an impact they've had on the financial system. On this week's episode we talk to Eric Balchunas, an ETFs analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence and Joel Weber, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg Markets magazine about how extraordinary...
Oct 23, 2017•25 min
On Monday October 19th, 1987, the Dow Jones fell 508 points in a one day crash that will forever be known as "Black Monday". In honor of the 30th anniversary, Joe and Tracy talk to Blair Hull, managing partner of Hull Trading Co., who was actively trading that day. While everyone else panicked, Hull spotted an opportunity and won big in the chaos. On this episode, we talk about how he was able to keep his head above water and what lessons that day holds for markets today. See omnystudio.com/list...
Oct 16, 2017•29 min
"Liquidity" is one of the most widely-talked about yet least understood concepts in markets. Roughly speaking, a market is liquid if you can transact in it without affecting the price significantly. But there's little agreement about why some markets are more liquid than others, or why liquidity sometimes just evaporates with little notice. This week we speak to Karthik Shashidhar, the author of "Between The Buyer And The Seller" about what we can learn about liquidity from things like Uber, dat...
Oct 09, 2017•32 min
The world of sell-side analysts has been upended in recent years with intense competition, new technology and regulation in the form of MIFID . At the same time, many of the issues being faced by the analyst industry are similar to the ones now faced by the media. On this week's episode, we talk to Steven Abrahams, the former head of mortgage bond and securitization research at Deutsche Bank AG, and now the co-founder and CEO of Milepost Capital Management, about his two decades of experiences i...
Oct 02, 2017•37 min
To wrap up our series on financial bubbles, the Odd Lots podcast looks back at an early episode, focusing on one of the most iconic bubbles of the 20th century: Beanie Babies. Two market bubbles stand out from the late 1990s. Technology stocks that were supposed to make everyone a zillionaire. The other: A series of mass-produced stuffed animals priced at $5 each. Odd Lots hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway speak with Zac Bissonnette, author of "The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion an...
Sep 25, 2017•29 min
There's a good chance that if you were a boy in the early 90s that you were a collector of baseball cards. For a few years, the baseball card industry went from being a niche collectible to a massive industry. It was, for a brief period, a legitimate bubble. On this week's Odd Lots podcast we talk to Dave Jamieson, the author of Mint Condition: How Baseball Cards Became an American Obsession . Among the topics we discussed include the role that pricing guides had in exacerbating the boom, the wa...
Sep 18, 2017•36 min
