Odd Lots

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 so simple. There hasn't been a big merger wave yet. And, in fact, the FTC under new Chair Andrew Ferguson has decided to keep the merger guidelines that Khan put in place. So does this mean continuity? At a live episode of the podcast taped in Washington DC, we spoke with Ferguson about the Trump administration's vision for antitrust. He talked about his philosophy of keeping corporate power in check and the tests he's using to preserve a competitive environment. He also walked us through the long history of the FTC and the notion of consumer welfare, plus why he thinks a more expansive interpretation of the term (beyond just lower prices) is in keeping with the history of conservative legal thought. Read More: New DOJ Antitrust Chief Builds Team From Prior AdministrationsTrump’s FTC Moves Ahead With Broad Microsoft Antitrust ProbeOnly Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 noblewoman would give birth to a boy or girl. So why was betting such a big thing in 1500s Italy? How did the papal prediction market actually work? And what can it tell us about prediction markets today? We speak to Ryan Isakow, the author of the No Dumb Ideas substack.Read More: A Live Experiment in Prediction MarketsPrediction Markets Are a Thing NowOnly Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at  bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 liberalizing zoning are tedious and slow. On this episode, we speak with Kevin Erdmann, a senior affiliated scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, who proposes a simple idea. He argues that after the Great Financial Crisis, regulators over-tightened lending standards, and in so doing, took out the entire "starter home" segment of the new housing market. He says that if Fannie and Freddie were to liberalize their lending standards, homebuilders would be incentivized to build more homes that cater to people with lower incomes and lower FICO scores, essentially re-creating a whole slice of the new home market that's disappeared over the last 15 years. Read More:US Homebuilders Face a Supply Chain Snarl From Tariff BattlesUS Mortgage Rates Decline to 6.88%, Lowest Level This Year Only Bloomberg - Business News, Stock Markets, Finance, Breaking & World News subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at  bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 investment officer of ARK Investment Management, is one of the most prominent, with ARK's Innovation Fund heavily invested in companies like Tesla, Coinbase and Roku. In this conversation, recorded live on stage at Bloomberg Invest, we discuss Cathie's view of potential opportunities in the space, and why she's expecting the Trump administration to create a Reagan Era-esque "golden age" for investors.Read More: Cathie Wood Sees Trump Era as ‘Golden Age’ for Wall StreetCathie Wood May Have Lost $14 Billion. But She’s InterestingOdd Lots is coming to Washington, DC on March 12! Get your tickets for our Jones Act debate here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 industry investment banker at Stifel. He explains how this industry has taken off in such a short period of time. Among the factors he cites: a generation of Chinese research scientists working in the US who hit a ceiling in terms of promotion and thus went back home to start companies. It’s also far cheaper to run clinical trials in China, due to the structure of the healthcare system. We also talk about the broad history of the pharmaceutical industry, how it’s evolved, and what impact, if any, AI will have on drug discovery.Read More:Former J&J Scientist Bets on China BiotechChinese Health Stocks Surge on DeepSeek Integration PotentialOdd Lots is coming to Washington, DC! Get your tickets for our Jones Act debate here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 actually work? What are the direct and indirect costs? What is the effect that's already playing out? On this episode, we speak to Carole LaBonne, a biologist and researcher at Northwestern University, on what she's already seeing from the changes.Read more:Trump’s Science Agency Pick Says He Won’t Cut More PersonnelThe US Is Withdrawing From Global Health at a Dangerous TimeOdd Lots is coming to Washington, DC! Get your tickets for our Jones Act debate here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 be over. So how significant could these changes be? And what do they mean for things like the euro, the dollar, and the wider financial system? And what are the vibes in Germany like right now? On this episode, we speak with George Saravelos, head of currency research at Deutsche Bank, about this huge moment.Read more:EU Backs German Push to Look at Easing Fiscal Rules for DefenseTrump Hails Tariffs as US Economy Barrels Into Trade Wars Odd Lots is coming to Washington, DC! Get your tickets for our Jones Act debate here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The 1970s were a pretty eventful time in markets. There was high inflation, the end of the gold standard, and a stock market crash. There was also a bunch of ideas coming out of the University of Chicago that would go on to be famous and highly influential for investors. Perhaps the most prominent is the Efficient Market Hypothesis, posited by Nobel Laureate Eugene Fama, which says that markets are right and it's useless for investors to try to outguess them. Fama later teamed up with David Booth, the founder of Dimensional Fund Advisors, and has been a longtime collaborator with the firm, which now has $777 billion under management. Today, they're releasing a documentary directed by Errol Morris and called "Tune Out the Noise," which chronicles this important time. We speak to both of these investment legends about the development of their theories, how they put them into practice, subsequent criticism, and what comes next. Read more:Wall Street Math Wizards Are Decoding Private-Market ReturnsUpstarts Challenge a Foundation of Modern InvestingCliff Asness Says Markets Are Less Efficient — And Social Media May Be to Blame Odd Lots is coming to Washington, DC! Get your tickets for our Jones Act debate here.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Almost whichever way you measure it, the US has a lot of debt. And, with the Trump administration recently proposing a budget that would see US debt levels swell even further, it doesn't look like this issue is going away any time soon. In this episode, we speak with Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and the author of the new book, How Countries Go Broke. We talk about how he thinks about debt cycles, the catalyst for when high levels of debt become an immediate problem, what a debt crisis actually looks like, and what the US needs to do to avoid a "heart attack" debt crisis within the next three years. We also speak about what investors should do in these scenarios, including Ray's thoughts on things like Bitcoin and gold. And, of course, we also speak about his role in helping create the Chicken McNugget.Read more:The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Bonds‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ Chatter Is Getting Wall Street’s AttentionOdd Lots is coming to Washington, DC! Get your tickets here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A week from today we will get the February jobs report and there are growing concerns that the US labor market is slowing. Already, the number of sectors adding jobs in this economy is on the decline. Meanwhile, the housing market continues to struggle. Add in the Department of Government Efficiency and worsening fiscal conditions in the state and local sector, and the government may prove to be a drag on employment. To talk about this and other macro developments, including possible tariffs, we brought back Jon Turek, founder and CEO of JST Advisors, to break it all down on this episode. Read more: US Initial Jobless Claims Hit Highest of 2025 Odd Lots is coming to Washington, DC! Get your tickets here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.