Odd Lots

Mar 24 2025 942 ep. 40 mins 40.8k

Odd Lots Podcast artwork

Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. Join the conversation every Monday and Thursday.

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Jim Millstein on the Massive Risks of Any 'Mar-a-Lago Accord'

Mar 24 2025 58 mins

President Trump wants higher tariffs, and he also wants more industrial production in the United States. This we know. In the meantime, a coterie of economists and pundits have tried to assemble a larger intellectual architecture to explain that strategy in a coherent way. The story they tell is one where America gets paid by its allies for national security and access to American

Lots More With Charlie McElligott on the Sharp, Strange Selloff

Mar 21 2025 25 mins

Last week, the US market sold off sharply. The S&P 500 fell as much as 3.6% on Monday alone, entering technical correction territory. Momentum trades were hit particularly hard and stocks that had been winners for years suddenly became losers, while ones that had been losers suddenly outperformed. Perhaps the strangest thing though, is that volatility didn't really surge as thi

The Great Jones Act Debate

Mar 20 2025 33 mins

We finally did it. We finally did an episode on the Jones Act. For years on the podcast, we've been referencing this controversial law from 1920, which places restrictions on domestic port-to-port transport in the United States. But we had never actually done an episode on what it is, why it was created, and why people feel so fervently about either keeping or maintaining it. There

FTC Chief Andrew Ferguson on the Trump Vision for Antitrust

Mar 17 2025 47 mins

When Donald Trump won in November, one of the things that Wall Street was excited about was an expected liberalization of merger rules. There was a popular view that under Chair Lina Khan, the Biden FTC was overly stringent about what deals it would let go through, and that the new administration would give the greenlight more often. But at least so far, reality hasn't proven to be

The Original Prediction Market Was Betting on the Pope

Mar 14 2025 41 mins

Prediction markets are everywhere nowadays. You can go online and bet on political outcomes, or the weather, or how long Taylor Swift will stay together with Travis Kelce. But prediction markets have a long history, and one of the earliest involved betting on who would be the next pope. In fact, Renaissance Romans gambled on everything from papal elections to whether a particular n

Is There an Extremely Simple Fix for Affordable Housing?

Mar 13 2025 40 mins

Housing affordability remains one of the single greatest sources of economic stress. Even if inflation measures were to come down, the simple cost of shelter is a huge burden on a wide swathe of the population. Hardly anyone disagrees with the idea of increasing supply, but this is easier said than done. There isn't a lot of spare construction capacity and the political fights over

Cathie Wood on What Comes Next in AI and Big Tech

Mar 11 2025 34 mins

Markets have been selling off, with shares of tech companies like Nvidia down almost 20% so far this year. But even before the recent selloff, DeepSeek rattled the AI market and sparked questions over how US platforms will compete and actually monetize their technology. Despite all these hurdles, some investors remain tech optimists. Cathie Wood, the founder, CEO and chief investme

Here Comes the Booming Chinese Biotech Sector

Mar 10 2025 43 mins

You’ve heard about Chinese EVs. You’ve heard about Chinese batteries and solar panels. And recently you learned that China is near the cutting edge of AI research. Here’s another category: biotech. In 2019, the Chinese share of molecules licensed to Big Pharma companies was 0%. In 2024, it’s now 31%. On this episode we speak with Tim Opler, a biotech industr

Trump's NIH Cuts Send Shockwaves Through the Science World

Mar 08 2025 44 mins

One of the first moves made by the Trump administration was to change the nature of grants made by the National Institutes of Health. Under the new policy, there's a 15% cap on "indirect costs" associated with a given grant. This is money that essentially pays for institutional overhead, not directly related to the new costs of the specific project itself. So how do NIH grants actu

We Just Saw Europe's Biggest Week in Decades

Mar 07 2025 30 mins

This week was a busy one and some of the most interesting things that happened came out of Europe, where policymakers announced up to €800 billion of additional defense spending and an easing of Germany's stringent debt rules. All of this comes as Europe responds to tariff threats from the Trump administration, as well as worries that the Trans-Atlantic security alliance may b