Odd Lots

This week the big story in markets is the selloff in bonds. Yields on benchmark 10-year US Treasuries jumped 20 basis points from last Friday’s low, while the 30-year rate is back above 5%. Meanwhile, 30-year Japanese government bonds clocked their highest yield since records began in 1999. And rates on UK gilts, German bunds, and Australian bonds are also rising. To make matters even more unusual, US Treasury yields are goin...

When we think about the prospect of deglobalization (whatever that means) we often think about it in terms of the goods economy. Supply chains get rerouted. Manufacturing becomes more localized, and possibly less efficient. But changes to the global world order also have implications for Wall Street, and the world of dealmaking. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Scott Bok, the longtime former chairman and CEO of the inv...

This is obviously an extraordinarily difficult time to make economic forecasts. Nobody really knows how tariffs will affect the US economy. And beyond that, nobody knows what the ultimate state of tariffs will be, or if they'll ever settle into a predictable rate. So how do you conduct monetary policy in this environment? On this episode, recorded at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, we spoke with Atlanta Fed President Raphael B...

The new administration has a "drill, baby, drill" mantra and a much more liberal attitude towards the oil and gas industry than the last one. But that hasn't translated into great profits for the oil industry itself. Crude prices have sunk and tariffs have raised the cost of components for compani...

There's been a lot of talk recently about parallels between Donald Trump's economic policies and the Nixon Shock of the early 1970s. That was when the former president took the dollar off the gold standard, introduced hefty tariffs, and pressured the Federal Reserve to ease monetary policy. The moves sparked stagflation in the US and shook up the global monetary order. Now, given Trump's determination to rebalance the US relationsh...

Gold prices have been booming and are near record highs. And seeing the line go up — especially during a period of so much uncertainty —  makes people want to buy more. That includes acquiring actual gold coins. But where do gold coins come from? Why do people want coins, as opposed to just bullion? And who is buying them? On this episode, we speak with Philip Diehl, the president of gold vendor US Money Reser...

Over the last several years, the world has watched as China edges close to or past the technological frontier in more and more areas. Earlier this year, US investors were jolted even further when DeepSeek's AI model proved to be close to the state of the art American models. So what is the process by which China actually develops new tech? Why has it worked out so well? And how do priorities set by President Xi Jinping actually get...

America's textile industry has famously declined over the years, with a bunch of production moving to lower-cost places like China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. Now, with the Trump administration imposing heavy tariffs on exports from these countries, the US clothing industry is facing another big shock. In this episode we speak with Sarah LaFleur, founder and CEO of M.M.LaFleur, which makes high-quality work clothing for women (Tracy ...

By now, everyone recognizes that the US and China are in the middle of a trade war, with the Trump administration having imposed tariffs of as much as 125% on Chinese goods. For an export-focused economy like China's, that's a big deal. At the same time, China is pretty much the only major country...

Every industry is going to be affected by the trade war in different ways. In many cases, we don't know how it's going to play out. Other industries are seeing an immediate impact. Companies that specialize in computer gaming are highly reliant on inputs from China and other East Asian countries. ...

There are several markets that have really settled down since the tumult of early April. But strange, unusual things are still popping up, particularly in the currency space. Over the last few days, we've seen a huge surge in the Taiwan dollar. This is important, in part, because Taiwanese life insurance companies are major buyers of US dollar assets, such as corporate bonds. Suddenly, they're looking at a major hit to the value of...

What does history say about how big the AI boom can get, and who will ultimately win out? When does a boom turn into a bubble that turns into a bust? On this episode of the podcast, we speak to Henry Blodget, the founder of Business Insider (and Joe's old boss there). In the late '90s, Henry was one of the most well-known Wall Street analysts covering internet stocks, before the crash and recriminations, which ended up in his lifet...

Over the last several years, both parties in the US have been drifting away from laissez-faire thinking about the economy, and more towards the view that the state has an active role in shaping markets. You have Republicans talking about stricter anti-trust and sovereign wealth funds, and of course Democrats embracing things like industrial policy efforts in key strategic sectors. But how do you design markets well? When does it fa...

We don't know what the end state for the tariffs are going to be, but inevitably there will be some shifts in the way that goods and dollars flow around the world economy. Of course, some parts of the economy are always subject to changing rules around subsidies and tariffs, and that's particularly true in agriculture. On this episode of the podcast we speak with Murad Al-Katib, the President and CEO of AGT Foods and Ingredients, w...

Everyone knows by now that college endowment funds have gone big on alternative investing, pouring billions of dollars into private equity and hedge funds. But that investing model now seems to be under pressure and there are reports that Ivy League institutions like Yale and Harvard are looking to unload some of their more illiquid investments. So why did colleges get into alts in the first place? And how do they select which fund...

Gathering official economic data is a huge process in the best of times. But a bunch of different things have now combined to make that process even harder. People aren't responding to surveys like they used to. Survey responses have also become a lot more divided along political lines. And at the same time, the Trump administration wants to cut back on government spending, and the worry is that fewer official resources will make t...

When stocks are plunging in a typical market environment, people reach for safe haven assets like US Treasuries. But we've seen that phenomenon break down more and more. It broke down in a sustained way during the intense inflation of 2022. And it's been breaking down again, in an acute way, since President Trump's so-called "Liberation Day." On the night of April 8 and early morning of April 9, we s...

Over the last few years, retail traders have gotten into options in a major way. Selling puts, buying calls, trading volatility — what used to be the domain of niche experts engaged in practical hedging has exploded into the public sphere. And there was a lot of easy money during a time when every dip was bought, and stocks mostly just went up. But what have we seen in recent weeks, with the extraordinary trading since April ...

If you look at most of the official hard data right now, there still isn't much evidence of a sharp downturn. Sure, all the surveys are abysmal, but the actual measures of economic activity are ok. But there is already data showing something severe is happening, and that can be seen in the volume of cargo flowing from China to the US. Of course, this is intentional. This is the whole point of tariffs. But the fear is that this is g...