Look out. Supply chains are back in the news. As soon as next week, workers at all of the ports on the US East Coast could go on strike, crippling trade across a range of industrial and agricultural parts of the economy. So what's at stake? What do the workers want? Is there any prospect of the US government heading it off? On this episode, we speak with Craig Fuller, the founder and CEO of FreightWaves, about what the labor dispute is all about and how it could possibly hammer the economy in th...
Sep 27, 2024•25 min
Right now, industrial policy is back in vogue in the US. The administration is making an effort at reviving specific sectors, notably in areas of clean energy and semiconductors. But despite all of the money being spent on subsidies of various sorts, there's no guarantee it will actually work. If it were easy, every country would do it. So what are the conditions that make it possible? And how can it go sour? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Vivek Chibber, a professor at NYU, and th...
Sep 26, 2024•50 min
These days if you talk to people about the stock market, they might talk to you about the effect of the Fed. Or they'll talk about the Mag 7 and AI capex spend. Or they'll extoll the virtues of passive, low-cost investing. It seems like you hear less and less about the art of security selection: Finding cheap diamonds in the rough that have been overlooked by other investors. But some people are still keeping that world alive. John Rogers is the founder and co-CEO of Ariel Investments, and in hi...
Sep 23, 2024•42 min
The Future Proof Festival takes place right on the beach in Huntington Beach, California. Thousands of registered investment advisors from all over the country come to talk shop, take pitches from vendors, eat tacos, drink beer, and listen to a concert from Third Eye Blind. On this Lots More, we talk with Sam Ro, the author of the Tker.co newsletter about the RIA scene, financial media, behavioral finance, the Fed, and the business of musical artists playing at conferences. See omnystudio.com/li...
Sep 20, 2024•26 min
This week, the Fed cut benchmark rates by 50 basis points. Lower financing costs should be a relief for companies that need to borrow in the form of bonds or loans. But, the weird thing about the previous few years of high rates and high inflation is how much corporate credit has defied expectations. While defaults increased slightly, there wasn’t a huge wave of bankruptcies. And most companies haven’t really had trouble finding financing, with a smorgasbord of options available to them — includ...
Sep 19, 2024•48 min
It’s Fed Day, and while everyone expects the central bank to cut benchmark interest rates, the key question is by how much? Will it be 25 basis points or 50? Investors are evenly split between the two possibilities, setting up one of the most uncertain meetings ever. So what does a big bond manager do on a day like this? In this episode, we speak with Dan Ivascyn, Group CIO at Pimco, where he manages the $158 billion Pimco Income Fund. He tells us what he’s expecting from the FOMC, and what he’s...
Sep 18, 2024•47 min
15 years ago was a pivotal moment for financial media. On the one hand, we were in the midst of a huge financial crisis, which shook everything up and exposed how little we knew about our own world. In addition to that, we were in the early moments of a revolution, which saw the rise of blogs, podcasts, "Finance Twitter" and other new platforms for disseminating information about markets and business. One of the winners from that era was Josh Brown, a former stockbroker who rose to fame in part ...
Sep 16, 2024•50 min
Financial institutions have been a leading target for cyber crime since the dawn of the internet. But phishing schemes have become far more intricate, and cyber heists go beyond stealing money from a bank. JF Legault, Deputy CISO at J.P. Morgan Chase, explains how he leads cyber defense on the front lines of work — and lays out a strategy to transform teams into early detection networks. Then David Adrian from Chrome unpacks how web browsing protections, robust monitoring, and a real-time view o...
Sep 15, 2024•23 min
This week, former European Central Bank President and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi published a long-awaited report examining ways to make the European economy more competitive. The report comes at a time when there are major concerns about how Europe is stacking up against the US and China in things like electrical vehicles and AI. It also dovetails with long-running debates about German fiscal austerity, economic tensions between various European Union members, energy crises, and inflati...
Sep 13, 2024•31 min
One of the big buzzwords over the last year or so has been "overcapacity." There's a constant line of argument that China is unfairly flooding the world with unprofitable goods and creating huge, unsustainable imbalances. Western countries, particularly the US (but also Europe), have responded by raising tariffs and engaging in domestic industrial policy in order to compete. But is the strategy sound? Are the basic premises of the problem correct? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Co...
Sep 12, 2024•50 min
One of the rare areas of bipartisan consensus in the US right now, is on the need to change our trading relationship with China. Former President Donald Trump started a process of putting tariffs on Chinese goods and limiting the export of certain key technologies. This has only expanded under the Biden administration, with expanded restrictions on things like electric vehicles, solar panels, and semiconductors. So what's the thinking behind this drive? What are the goals and what are the risks?...
Sep 09, 2024•57 min
Pretty much since the moment that cryptocurrencies came into existence, there's been a chorus of skeptics who argue that they solve no real world use cases, except for gambling and speculation. For a while, there was a lot of hype about things like Web3 or DeFi, but for the most part, these still remain in the realm of pure speculation and gambling. And so, the ultimate use case for crypto remains elusive. Our guest on this episode argues otherwise. He thinks that stablecoins, such as Circle or ...
Sep 06, 2024•52 min
One of the problems in investing or trading is that — to use a common disclaimer — past results are no guarantee of future success. Someone can have a great track record in their stock picks, but maybe they just got lucky. Or maybe they were particularly well-dialed into one market regime that inevitably shifts. Or maybe they're actually just better than other traders. For multi-strategy hedge funds or "pod shops," there's an ongoing battle to hire or train the next great portfolio manager. But ...
Sep 05, 2024•55 min
There's been a lot of talk about private credit in recent years. The market has exploded in size, and there are worries that it could be a bubble that eventually bursts and sparks disaster. But there are other negative effects from private credit that might already be happening. In a new paper called " The Credit Markets Go Dark ," co-authors Harvard Law School professor Jared Ellias and Duke University School of Law professor Elisabeth de Fontenay argue that the $1.5 trillion market for private...
Sep 02, 2024•54 min
Last week at Jackson Hole, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a short and powerful speech indicating that it's time for a policy pivot. The goal now, from his perspective, is to prevent further deterioration of the US labor market. His speech didn't delve much into theory or nuance. In this episode, we speak with Peterson Institute President, Adam Posen, who found the speech unsatisfying. He argues that the state of the labor market, while cooling, didn't merit a "rifle shot" approach...
Aug 30, 2024•34 min
Remember August 5th? That was the day that markets around the world plunged in historic fashion and everyone became an overnight expert on the yen carry trade. But what really is the yen carry trade? How big is it? Who is making the trade? And what is its connection to markets all around the world? On this episode, recorded at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, we speak with Hyun Song Shin, economic advisor and head of research at t...
Aug 29, 2024•38 min
When the Treasury market broke in March 2020, the Federal Reserve intervened in extraordinary fashion. It purchased more than $1 trillion worth of Treasury securities in that month alone. Superficially, this looked a lot like the Quantitative Easing that we came to know during the GFC. But it's purpose was different. This wasn't about depressing the yield curve or providing a form of strong forward guidance. Instead, it was the Fed taking on a role of the "market maker of last resort," so to spe...
Aug 28, 2024•34 min
At Jackson Hole, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell gave a clear signal that the rate cut cycle is likely to start in September. But of course that just opens more questions. Will it be a 25bps cut? Will it be 50? Could it be two 50s in a row? When does it stop? On today's episode, we speak with Peter Williams, a macro strategist at 22V Research. He walks us through his interpretation of Powell's speech and what to look for as the rate cut cycle begins. Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lot...
Aug 27, 2024•27 min
This year’s Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming marked a big change for US monetary policy, with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell telegraphing the first rate cuts in potentially two years. But what’s it actually like to be a policymaker at one of the most famous economics conferences in the world? And what do central bankers do when they all get together to talk policy? In this episode, we catch up with Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin, who describes what it’s like to be at Jackso...
Aug 26, 2024•35 min
Every year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City hosts an economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It’s a chance for central bankers and other policymakers to talk about issues facing the global economy, debate academic literature, and provide further guidance on the future path of monetary policy. This week’s symposium marked a step change for the Fed, with Chair Jerome Powell announcing that the “time has come” for rate cuts after years of hikes. So what makes him confident that inflati...
Aug 23, 2024•21 min
Synthetic risk transfers, in which banks purchase insurance-like protection on some of their loans, is a growing market on Wall Street, with billions worth of deals made in the US last year. But of course, anything with the words "synthetic" and "risk transfer" is probably going to remind people of the 2008 financial crisis, when securitizations of loans blew up and infected the banking system. So what exactly are these new trades? Why do banks want to do them and what are investors getting in r...
Aug 22, 2024•52 min
Political prediction markets — where traders can make bets on election outcomes — have been around for years. But in this cycle in particular, we've seen an explosion of interest, with people constantly checking the odds on sites like Polymarket and PredictIt to assess the state of the US presidential race. But how accurate are these markets? How do people make money on them? What do they tell us beyond what traditional polling or modeling already indicates? On this episode, we speak with Nate S...
Aug 19, 2024•45 min
The Federal Reserve appears to be ready to pivot into rate cutting mode. Inflation has come down significantly, and the unemployment rate has been trending upward for most of the year. In fact, in the most recent Non-Farm Payrolls report, the headline unemployment rate of 4.3% triggered the so-called "Sahm Rule," which has been a historically reliable signal that the US is already in a recession. So are we in a recession? Could the rule be wrong this time due the unique features of this economic...
Aug 16, 2024•25 min
The past few years have thrown up a number of potential weaknesses in the American economy. There've been disruptions to supply chains stemming from the global pandemic. There are concerns about the availability of strategically important items like semiconductors and vaccines. Meanwhile, Russia's invasion of Ukraine roiled global commodity markets and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East has created even more complications for shipping. So how is the US thinking about economic security and w...
Aug 15, 2024•56 min
When it comes to financing the US government's borrowing needs, the Treasury Department has some discretion in how it's done. It can sell 30-year Treasuries. It can sell 10-year Treasuries. It can sell a lot of three-month T-bills. Every quarter, it's always going to be some kind of mix. And in theory, the decisions about where on the curve it issues debt can have effects on the market and the economy, since different instruments have different liquidity and risk profiles. Recently, the Treasury...
Aug 12, 2024•46 min
Hasbro has been making toys for decades, including many classic favorites like G.I. Joe and My Little Pony. But in recent years, it's also been going big on digital games. An app version of the classic board game Monopoly — called Monopoly GO! — has become one of the top mobile games of all time and grossed billions in revenue since it launched last year. Hasbro also owns Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Magic: The Gathering , Dungeons & Dragons , and the best-selling video game Baldur...
Aug 09, 2024•51 min
There's a lot of hype around generative AI and many people have interfaced with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini at this point. It's fun to ask these large language models to come up with a song parody or to write a story, but most casual users of the technology probably aren't worried about things like copyrights, the sensitivity of what they're inputting into the platform, or even the accuracy of the answers being spit out. It's just fun to play around with the technology. For large companies, howev...
Aug 08, 2024•52 min
The S&P 500 has plunged more than 5% over the past couple of trading days. The Nasdaq 100 is down 7%. The Nikkei fell an astonishing 13% on Monday and then triggered a circuitbreaker as it climbed up 10% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, measures of equity market volatility like the VIX have soared to their highest levels since the pandemic crisis of 2020. So what’s behind all these dramatic moves? There’s a long list of culprits, with market participants blaming everything from the Federal Reserve bei...
Aug 06, 2024•28 min
The Nasdaq is now in correction territory and the S&P 500 is down more than 2% so far this month. Analysts are blaming any number of things for the selloff, including a slowdown in the economy, the Federal Reserve being behind the curve on rate cuts, hedge funds rotating out of positions, and waning enthusiasm for AI. But Matt King, the former Citigroup strategist who's now founded his own research shop called Satori Insights, argues there's something else going on. He believes that the worl...
Aug 05, 2024•41 min
This week, the Federal Reserve opted to keep interest rates unchanged while suggesting that it could cut as soon as September. But there's an ongoing discussion about whether or not the Fed is behind the curve, with some of the most recent data suggesting that the economy is already slowing. On Thursday, for instance, initial jobless claims rose to the highest level in almost a year while the ISM survey showed manufacturing activity shrinking by the most in eight months. So is the Fed making a m...
Aug 02, 2024•26 min
