Odd Lots

For over a century, tobacco stocks have been among the greatest investments in history, consistently outperforming other sectors decade after decade. But what is it about tobacco companies specifically that has led to this incredible performance? On this episode, we speak with financial advisor Lawrence Hamtil along with Gene Hoots, a financial advisor and the author of “Going Down Tobacco Road”, to discuss the extraordinary performance of this sector.

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In the wake of the Great Financial Crisis, you heard a lot of talk about the US becoming like Greece unless the budget deficit were brought under control. However, these warnings proved to be unfounded. That being said, there are risks of a different variety. On the latest Odd Lots, we speak with the economist Michael Hudson on the risk of too much private sector debt, which could lead to permanently degraded consumption and investment.

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Interest in quantitative investing strategies continues to grow; however, as the space gets more competitive, making money and winning gets harder and harder. Computation costs alone can be prohibitive. On the latest episode, we speak with Columbia Business School professor Ciamac Moallemi about how the world's best quant funds thrive.

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One of the guiding lights of Fed policy over the years has been the so-called Neutral Rate of Interest or R*. It's at this rate, theoretically, where the economy comes into balance, with full employment and stable prices. Yet, not only has discovering that level become challenging, but the premise itself has been called into question...

In a carry trade, an investor borrows money cheaply to buy an asset that yields more. As long as nothing changes overall, the investors get to pocket the spread. In our latest episode, our guests argue that more and more aspects of the economy resemble this trade, and that the culprit is the policymaker suppression of volatility...

These days it seems like all financial markets are the same big trade. A gold chart looks like a Tesla chart, which looks like an Ethereum chart, which looks like a chart of a basket of cloud computing stocks. So why is this? And what could cause that to change? On this episode, we speak with Jared Woodard, the head of the Research Investment Committee at Bank of America, who recently published a report on exactly this...

Back in 2017, during the Bitcoin boom, there were a number of different attempts to use blockchain technology to improve a host of businesses and industries. Many of those were cynical attempts to cash in on the bubble, but some did have loftier ambitions. On this episode of Odd Lots, we speak with Maria Bustillos, who was the co-founder of a project called Civil, which aimed to fund a series of newsrooms, backed by their own Ethereum-based token...

Crypto is hot this year again. In 2020, we've not only seen a substantial rally across a lot of different coins, there's been an emergency of new experiments, categories, and protocols. Is it more sustainable this time around, or is it going to fizzle like it did last time? On this episode, we speak with Catherine Coley, the CEO of Binance US about trends in this market, why she left the traditional finance world to go crypto, and where all of this new activity is actually going...

The use of so-called "alternative data" has been gathering attention for some time. Investors have been looking at things like credit cards or satellite photos of Walmart parking lots for insights into businesses before earnings or official government numbers come out. But during this crisis, alternative data has really come into its own. The speed of the crash and recovery happened so fast, it was clear that traditional numbers weren’t timely enough to get a read on what was going on...

One of the most intriguing subplots to the 2020 stock market boom has been the speculative fervor with which investors have dived into this market. And it's not just that participants have bought a lot of stock, but that they've been using aggressive options strategies to do so. What's more, it's a range of players doing it, from retail traders on Robinhood (and other platforms) to large institutions like SoftBank...