Odd Lots

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Latest Episodes:

Moderna's CFO on How to Allocate Capital in Big Pharma Mar 11, 2024

Show notes

The pharmaceutical space is characterized by extreme uncertainty. You never know what drugs are going to pan out. The lead time for development is extremely long. Market size is inherently unknowable. And the regulatory and pricing climate is constantly changing. So, how does a company decide where to invest its cash? On this episode, we speak with Moderna's chief financial officer, Jamey Mock, about how he views the problem. He explains the process by which the vaccine maker chooses which bets to make, how changing fortunes within the stock market affect corporate decision-making and the role of the government in accelerating progress and de-risking investment.

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Lots More on Why Japanese Stocks Are Surging Mar 08, 2024

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Japanese stocks are suddenly soaring, with the Nikkei 225 hitting an all-time high this week after decades of languishing. Warren Buffett has been upping his stakes in Japanese companies and activist investors are taking an interest in the market for the first time in decades. And while all these dramatic headlines might seem to be coming out of nowhere, the road to Japan's big corporate comeback has arguably been years in the making. On this episode of Lots More, we speak with Travis Lundy, a Japan markets expert and special situations analyst who publishes on SmartKarma. He walks us through the history of Japan Inc. and how we got to this point. We discuss just how investor-friendly have Japanese companies actually become, what specific examples are we seeing of return-focused strategies, and what seems to be driving the change.

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Celsius CEO Explains How They Win in Energy Drinks Mar 07, 2024

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Go to any deli or 7-Eleven these days and you're sure to see a gigantic, technicolor wall of beverages. There are juices and sodas and CBD-infused beverages and caffeinated energy drinks as far as the eye can see. The wall just keeps getting larger. And whereas in the past you might just see Red Bull and Monster in the energy drink space, now there are numerous competitors, with a wide range of flavors and branding. So what does it take to stand out in this booming market? And how do you get your beverage on that gigantic wall? On this episode, we speak with John Fieldly, the CEO and president of Celsius Holdings, about how his company became the third largest energy drink company in the US. We discuss what it takes to succeed in terms of branding, packaging, distribution and shelf-space.

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Introducing: The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly Mar 05, 2024

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The Deal, hosted by Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly, features intimate conversations with business titans, sports champions and game-changing entrepreneurs who reveal their investment philosophies, pivotal career moves and the ones that got away. From Bloomberg Podcasts and Bloomberg Originals, The Deal is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Bloomberg Carplay, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also watch The Deal on Bloomberg Television, and Bloomberg Originals on YouTube.

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Anat Admati on How to Never Bail Out Banks Again Mar 04, 2024

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We're coming up to the one-year anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which sparked a fresh conversation about the role of banks in the wider economy. Last year's banking drama culminated in the Federal Reserve unveiling a new liquidity facility for lenders and the US government made bank customers whole even beyond the $250,000 limit on guaranteed deposit insurance. So what did we learn from the March banking crisis? And what could we be doing differently now? In this episode, we speak with Anat Admati, professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, about why bank bailouts (in all their different varieties) persist and what can be done about it. Anat became a major advocate of banking reform following the 2008 financial crisis, and has continued to lobby regulators and government officials for fundamental change. She discusses why banks are structurally disincentivized to behave like other types of companies, the impact of new capital requirements including the Basel Endgame proposal, and competition with other types of lenders including private credit.

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How to Put a Price on a Bird: the Forgotten Science of Economic Ornithology Mar 01, 2024

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This episode is for the birds — and one bird in particular. Flaco, an Eurasian eagle-owl, escaped from the Central Park Zoo last year and went on to become a local celebrity, delighting New Yorkers with his feathered adventures across Manhattan. Late last month, however, Flaco died after an apparent collision with a building. Obviously, Flaco's death is a sad event for many reasons, but it got us thinking about the role of birds in the wider world. Not only are they an important part of the natural ecosystem, but they can also contribute to agriculture (or quality of life in the city) by eating bugs, rats and other pests. So can you put an exact dollar amount on the value of a bird and what it does for the world? It turns out that for many decades, some economists were devoted to exactly this question. In this episode, we speak with Robert Francis, the author of the Bird History Substack, about the largely forgotten science of economic ornithology and historic attempts to figure out exactly how much a bird is worth.

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What Really Goes Into the Fed's Favorite Measure of Inflation? Feb 29, 2024

Show notes

The Federal Reserve has a goal of getting inflation down to 2%. But of course, there are a lot of different ways of measuring inflation. Many people know about the Consumer Price Index, and the various ways it can be sliced and diced. The Fed, however, focuses on a different index — Personal Consumption Expenditure — which differs from the CPI in a number of ways, both in terms of category weightings and methodological approaches. So why are there different measures of inflation? Why does the Fed prefer PCE? And how is PCE actually assembled? On this episode, we speak with Omair Sharif, founder and president of Inflation Insights, as well as Skanda Amarnath, executive director of Employ America. We explore these two different measures, the approaches for calculating them, and the weird quirks underneath the surface that makes them all so interesting and controversial.

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How the Rise of 'Pod Shops' Is Reshaping the Way Markets Trade Feb 26, 2024

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The hedge fund industry has gone through multiple evolutions. Investing styles go in and out of fashion as market conditions change. Strategies that work become crowded with investors, which can mean they stop working as well. The hottest thing these days are so-called multi-strategy funds or "pod shops" that employ multiple distinct teams, each with a specific mandate, style and edge. In theory, with good risk management and internal capital allocation, this can produce robust results across many cycles. So how do these funds work, how are they making money, and what does the expansive growth of this new style of fund mean for markets? In this episode, we speak with Krishna Kumar, a portfolio manager at Goose Hollow Capital Management, about the rise of multi-strategy hedge funds, why they're so popular, and how the increasing amount of money deployed by these firms is changing the way that markets trade.

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How Ukraine Delivers the Mail During Wartime Feb 23, 2024

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If you order something from Ukraine right now, be it a T-shirt or a vintage Christmas ornament, chances are it will arrive on time and in good shape. Not only is the country's mail service still operating, even as it grapples with an invasion by Russia, but the role of the post office has also changed. The mail has become a lifeline for Ukrainians who rely on it to receive pension payments, medicine, or to run online businesses as domestic jobs get disrupted. So how exactly is the Ukrainian mail system working right now? What operational and logistical changes has it had to make to keep going, and what does the service's future look like? In this episode, we speak with Igor Smelyansky, the CEO of Ukrposhta, about delivering the mail during a time of war.

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A Longtime Aerospace Analyst Questions Boeing's Future Feb 22, 2024

Show notes

Troubles at Boeing just keep piling up, along with existential questions about the company's future. Not only is Boeing enormously important to US manufacturing, but it's also a major defense contractor for the US government and a big employer, which means its fortunes are of interest to more than just shareholders. So just how bad are the difficulties facing Boeing at the moment and what is the planemaker planning to do about it? On this episode, we speak to Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, about Boeing's history and future. He talks about lesser-known developments at the company, including its recent decision to dissolve its firm-wide strategy unit, and the decisions that go into developing new aircraft.

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