The Odd Lots AMA Episode: Tracy and Joe Answer Listener Questions
29:17 Share

89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority, according to research by Boston Consulting Group. The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at Fortune 500 companies use Grammarly. With top-tier security credentials and 15 years of experience in responsible AI, Grammarly is how companies like yours increase productivity while keeping data protected and private. See why 70,000 teams trust Grammarly at grammarly.com slash enterprise.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp has been revolutionary in connecting people to mental health services. Using BetterHelp can be as easy as opening your laptop or your phone and clicking a button, and the session begins.

Clients are able to choose in what way they would like to communicate with me, whether video or on the phone or chat texting. BetterHelp is there when you need it, and that's what makes all the difference. Visit betterhelp.com slash podbusiness to get 10% off your first month. Therapists were compensated. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. ♪

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. And I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, it's time for our annual AMA episode. The annual call-in show. This is my favorite time of the year, Joe. Totally. It's a weird time of year, actually. The thing is, I feel like...

We're always answering questions that people ask us, right? Really? No. Maybe we are too accessible. No, I never feel that way. Seriously? I feel like all we do is ask questions and no one ever asks us questions. I feel like if people want to ask us questions, it's pretty easy to do so. But we still have this call-in show. It's amazing that your entire job is...

is you ask questions to people multiple times a week, every week for the entire year. And your main takeaway from the year is that you answer too many questions. That's not my main takeaway. No, that's really interesting. That's very relevant. That was not my main takeaway. My main takeaway was we are question platform agnostic. Like it doesn't really matter what format the questions come in, whether they're called in like in this show or whether they're typed in via the Discord or on Blue Sky or Twitter or something else.

This is fair. I like talking to people. I like answering questions, but I like the call-in format. I miss the old days of, you know, it'd be fun to do a live radio show with call-ins. It would be fun to do it live. When I was a kid, I called into sports talk radio sometimes, and I sort of missed that platform. And you don't really get that with podcasts so much. Wait, what did you say on sports radio? I don't remember. You know, I think, like, I used to follow baseball really closely, and I would, like, say, like, oh, I think the—

Toronto Blue Jays have a lot of momentum down the stretch, and I think they're going to win the American League. It's just some nonsense like that. Sports analysis and commentary is just something I struggle to get into because it's either, well, the team played well, or I think the team could play better. That's it. That's the sum totality of what people say on those things. So, yes, we are going to be – we invited listeners to record a voice memo and then email that to avlots at bloomberg.net.

And let's take a listen to some and Tracy and I will do our best to answer them. We'll pretend that we're live. Yeah. This is Steve from Northville, New Jersey. I would like Tracy and Joe to set up a cage match type hardcore debate on the value of cryptocurrency. Every sane analyst says it's a pointless scam which uses tons of energy to create valueless tokens that have been bid up to insane prices and at the same time greatly facilitate many criminal transactions.

On the other side, there are a host of promoters that say it is the future of finance.

First off, Steve, that's not a question. That's a request. But you know what? We'll take it. We'll take what we can get. I think it's a good request. I would like to see a cage match on crypto. Yeah. So, you know, I've said it before. I have people from time to time to ask us, you know, we should do a debate topic. And we may have done one or two of theirs. The reason I'm skeptical about, well, I mean, if we're talking about a literal cage match where people beat people up, that's fine.

But if we're talking about a figurative one where it's some sort of debate, debates to my mind are only interesting if the two sides agree on like 99% of premises or they agree on all definitions, et cetera. And there is a very specific thing. Most debates on crypto, you get some sort of mainstream Keynesian economist and then some sort of

you know, crazy laser eyes person that don't agree on anything. They just talk past each other. Not a particularly productive use. And I think most debates in public forums are like that. But if we can find the right guests who largely agree and then disagree on something specific, maybe that's a good 2025 ambition. I think you're right that that's kind of a difficulty there. The one other thing

thing I would say when it comes to crypto the use case or the envisioned purpose of cryptocurrency always seems to be changing right sure and I used to think I've written about this but I used to think that was a bad thing that you know one day bitcoin for instance would be like a way to pay for things and then the next day it would be a store of value and

and it would just change every day. But I think as time has gone on, we've kind of seen that that's turned out to be a strength rather than a weakness, but it does make it incredibly hard to have a reasonable discussion over the use case. Totally. You know, I would say we did that episode a couple months ago with Austin Campbell. I think we're going to have him back on soon. I'm like coming around to some of like the stable coin stuff maybe. Anyway, should we go to the next question? Next question.

Hey, Joe and Tracy. My name is Ryan Ross. I'm based in New Jersey. And I'm curious, what have been your most favorite industries you've learned about in the past? And also, what are you interested in learning about in 2025? You've had episodes on the tractor supply, which was interesting, and wood pallets and how those are logistically moved around.

an episode about how car leather affects the price of gummy bears. So I'm curious, what's been most interesting to you in the past in terms of industries? And also, what are you interested in learning about in 2025? Ooh.

Hi, Ryan. I like this question. There are a lot of interesting things that we get to talk about on the podcast. And at the end of the year, it kind of becomes hard to remember all of them. I will say one thing I really enjoyed diving into this year was doing a bit more on agriculture. I think one of the great things of hosting your own podcast is that you can sort of, to some extent, tailor the content to your new interests. And I think that's a really good thing.

And, you know, I've kind of become interested in gardening and growing my own food. And I have some latent prepper tendencies, I guess is the way I would put it. And so it's been really fun to kind of dive into industrial agriculture and learn more about that. That's a good answer. Tracy, will you shelter my family in the event of some disaster? Like, do you have enough stored away? No, no, Joe, what do you bring to the table? Oh.

Other than sparkling conversation. Which is really important, if we're being honest. You're in for the long haul. I don't know. My kids are very cute. This is very true. Yeah, all right. You know...

So I like learning about agriculture too. So I've said it before. I really want to do more on defense in 2025. Oh, yeah, of course. Defense spending, the defense industrial base. And if anyone listening to this has the perfect guess in anything about how...

That all works, which I really know nothing about. Shoot me and Tracy a message because I would say that's a big area that feels wide open and interesting for me next year. Defense is a really good one that crosses over into financial markets quite a bit, but also is obviously in the news given the new Trump administration and Elon Musk and Doge and all of that. One thing...

One other thing I would say that I'm interested in in 2025 that touches on agriculture, I really want to do a fertilizer episode. Oh, yeah. Like where fertilizer comes from and whether or not all the headlines you see about, you know, the land becoming less fertile. How serious should we be taking those? So, yeah, if anyone has fertilizer contact contacts, send them our way as well. Let's do it. Should we go to the next? Let's do it. Hey, Tracy. Hey, Joe. This is Duncan.

I am curious, what is the most embarrassingly wrong take you've had on something in popular discourse over the last five years? Love the show. Thanks.

Wait, Joe, did Duncan say the most embarrassing take or our most embarrassing take? I think he said the most embarrassingly wrong take that you've had, but I don't know if it was a collective our. Oh. I think it was more specifically, you know, like either one of us. Man, I mostly have wrong takes. You know, like I wouldn't have expected crypto to bounce as much as it had starting in 2020 when FTX imploded. Yeah.

I wouldn't have expected that so quickly. You know, I remember we did episodes years ago about like China's like main 2025 stuff and I wouldn't have expected it to be as successful as

as it has i wouldn't have expected inflation to persist and be as elevated as uh long as it has what else i mean i'm mostly i mostly get things wrong i mean it's harder for me to think of what i get things right about i don't know tracy do you have any do you have any i'm trying to think of anything like really really bad i would say i probably wrote my last bitcoin obituary in like 2017 i

And I've written quite a few at this point before I had my big, like, come to Jesus moment about narrative flexibility and the idea that as long as the story's there, it almost doesn't matter what the story is. And there's always going to be a new one. I'm trying to think. I will say there's just no upside, right? In writing another obituary. No. What are you going to get from that? No.

And I will say the last obituary here, here's a bit of a inside, like journalistic navel gazing, but the last obituary that I wrote on Bitcoin, I made sure to end it with like the possibility that it could come back. You've learned having written obituaries before where it did come back. I learned a little bit. So it's a constant process where you're trying to improve on your own work. And the one thing I would say is, and I don't think people realize this, but journalism, everything,

plays out very publicly, right? It's like you do your work, you put it in front of people at the end of every day and people get to comment on it and decide if they like it or not, if they think it's good or not. And so you're constantly sort of getting that immediate feedback and trying to go back and improve yourself based on it. So it's an iterative process. Let's just put it that way. I'm trying to just think if there's anything else that got... I don't know. Is it...

I like, you know what? I don't think, I don't think I've had many like embarrassingly mega wrong takes in part because I don't have many like takes where I stick my neck out and say like this. Oh, I know one. I know one that Joe had. What about the thing about scooters? How scooters are going to be like the next mode of transportation? You know what's funny though? So this is fair, but someone then reached out to me and said, you know, you're,

you were wrong about scooters in the U.S., but that in Europe, actually, they have been highly disruptive. So I'm actually giving myself a half point. This is someone who reached out to me from Paris, actually. So I'm going to take a half point.

credit for that. Anyway, yeah, I mostly have modestly wrong takes rather than anything incredibly embarrassing, but Duncan, thank you for the question. Duncan, I will say our takes, we try to ground them in some reality with rational analysis and reason. So hopefully they're never too embarrassing. We show our work, right? Yeah, we show the work. I'm sure we could come up with some, find some if we went back into the archives that

that we wouldn't want anyone to see now. But hey, they're all there. They're all public. Next question. Hey, Joe and Tracy. This is Nick or Newsman on Blue Sky. I'd like to know what you think is the most significant financial story of the year. I know there's a lot to consider, but there must be one thing that bubbles up to the top when you hear this question. Thank you for your time. I love odd lots. Oh, man, Nick. There is a lot to consider. I do think one thing...

One thing that I find really interesting, and I think you could probably connect it to a bunch of different things that are going on right now, is the episode that we did a while back on companies getting smarter about how they're pricing their respective products. And it sounds like an incremental thing. It's like, okay, well, companies, they're always trying to charge more and make more money. And now they figured out some interesting new ways to do it with new technology. But I think

The level of sophistication and the way that they're doing it is starting to become a problem. And the more it comes on people's radars, I think the more sense of unfairness there is in the general American population over the practice. And maybe that's why you get so much of this anger sort of boiling up into politics and things like that. So price pack architecture, I think, is a really interesting one.

I have three stories that I think are the three biggest stories in the world right now and of varying time concerns. One is just the incredible amount to which everyone, every investor is implicitly who has long risk assets, is long tech and long AI specifically. Concentration. Concentration in this one bet. Anyone who has a diversified portfolio is making a bet in some way on tech and AI.

The incredible rise of China as a manufacturing powerhouse and the sort of big questions about whether anything is going to get built anywhere in the world that's not China and can anyone be competitive in manufacturing outside of China's borders.

And then the destabilizing effects of mobile technology, which I think we're sort of, you know, social media and how that's changing politics everywhere. And I think, you know, you look like Romania recently, like, you know, revert canceled an election because they claim that there was interference from Russia via tick tock and so forth.

And the sort of like ways that new technologies are reverberating across democracies and we see change and basically everywhere, numerous shocking developments everywhere. I think in part due to tech. Those to me are the three big stories right now. When do we get to do the drone slash UFO episode, Joe? I hope. Let's go to the next question. Hey, Joe and Tracy.

This is Daniel in Seattle, Washington. I was just wondering your opinion on AI models being trained on journalist content across the web. And feel free to elaborate on what your colleagues might think or who has a bigger bone to pick. Is it you as a journalist or the media company? Oh, this is an interesting question. Mm-hmm.

I think if you had asked me this like 10 years ago before chat GPT and all the other variations of it became a big thing, I think I would have expected to be really annoyed at this development. Good answer. But actually...

Now that it's happened, I feel kind of relaxed about this idea that, you know, it trained on basically the entirety of the Internet and a big chunk of the Internet is stuff that paid journalists have been writing for years. I don't know. Like, I don't really feel that upset about it. Do you? No, I don't. And also, I don't know. Maybe I should like, but I don't. And also, I don't think it's really worth getting upset. Like there are some things that I think of as they sort of.

big historical technological shifts that are happening. And I don't think our opinions matter very much. So I guess maybe in some sense, I could be convinced to be upset about it. But in reality, I don't think me being upset is going to do very much. I think a lot of journalists have also probably given up on the notion of making money from like old fashioned copy. And so the idea of someone else being able to make money off of it.

Even if it's by training some new generative AI models, fair game to them. Maybe we should all start developing our own AI models. Maybe that's the way forward. We'll try. Actually, remind me, Tracy, I have a research project I want to do in 2024 or 2025. I'm going to tell you about it. That sounds interesting. Yeah. 89% of business leaders say AI is a top priority, according to research by Boston Consulting Group.

But with AI tools popping up everywhere, how do you separate the helpful from the hype? The right choice is crucial, which is why teams at Fortune 500 companies use Grammarly. With over 15 years of experience building responsible, secure AI, Grammarly isn't just another AI communication assistant. It's how companies like yours increase productivity while keeping data protected and private.

Designed to fit the needs of business, Grammarly is backed by a user-first privacy policy and industry-leading security credentials. This means you won't have to worry about the safety of your company information. Grammarly also emphasizes responsible AI so your company can avoid harmful bias.

See why 70,000 teams and 30 million people trust Grammarly at grammarly.com slash enterprise. That's Grammarly at grammarly.com slash enterprise. Grammarly. Enterprise-ready AI.

I'm Shinali Basik, and I hope you'll join me and many of the most important institutional investors and money managers for the year's preeminent finance event, Bloomberg Invest, returning to New York on March 4th and 5th. Come face to face with leading voices in markets. Identify the next big investments. Forge meaningful connections and swap strategies. Register now at BloombergLive.com slash invest.

That's BloombergLive.com slash invest. All right, next question, please. Hello, Joe and Tracy. This is Moise from Karachi, Pakistan. I'm a big fan of the show. My question to both of you is that who are your favorite economists and why are they your favorite?

Oh, interesting. Well, hello, Moiz from Karachi, Pakistan. I spent some time in Pakistan. I was in Islamabad and Lahore. I never made it to Karachi, though. I would have liked to go there. Favorite economist?

Do you think he means current or like old school economist? Well, you know what? We can answer however we want. That's a good... Okay. Well, then I'm going to do like a massive cop out and I'm just going to say Keynes. Yeah. And the reason is like, A, he's like, you know, a sort of granddaddy of a lot of modern economics theory. But also, I think he was a really good writer. Yeah. And he has some amazing quotes that I still like every once in a while when I find myself being very pretentious. I find myself using like the...

words are meant to be a little wild for they are the, what is it? For they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. I think that's it. Yeah. Those are some good quotes. He's a good writer. You know, he wrote, I wasn't recently went back to,

And, you know, the last few years people have talked about the so-called vibe session, etc. He talked about that quite a bit. In fact, but he didn't call it a vibe session. He didn't call it the vibe session. But what he said, I went back and read something. I forget. It might be like in chapter 12 of the general theory. Our producer says he did call it a vibe session. No, he didn't. Our producer is trolling us. Kale, don't do that. It's

It's Keynes. Anything is possible. But he went back. I was reading something. I think it's like in chapter 12, one of the really good chapters. And he says something about like how political shifts can change people's perceptions of the economy, which is sort of intuitive. And we see it in polls or whatever. But then this thing he said afterwards is like,

There's sort of no point in being upset about this. Like it's like people get angry or these facts about seeming irrationality that when the preferred party is in power out of power, that people shift and,

that then people change their view about investment and impulse and all the investment impulse. And that like, it sort of bothers people intellectually. And he has like some good lines. I forget exactly what it is. I reread it recently, which is like, again, don't work yourself up trying to like get irritated at the whims of the public, except that the whims of the public are the whims of the public. And that when the political shifts happen,

the vibe shift, so to speak. And this is what it means to sort of understand the economy, which I thought was really good. Yeah, that's pretty good. So you're also in the Keynes camp. I'll go with Keynes. All right. Fair enough. Next question. Hi, Tracy and Joe. My name is Rosalind Luby and I live in Westport, Connecticut. My question is whether the podcast is going to tackle the state of the venture capital industry as a topic in 2025.

I teach a class on alternative investments to undergraduate college kids in an economics department. And I've used your podcast extensively in my class. And I think this would be a great topic for you guys to dig your teeth into. Thank you.

I agree. This would be a great topic. And I got to say, whenever I hear we have a lot of professors who will often reach out and say that they use all thoughts material to teach their students. And I always think that like the students are learning a lot more interesting things than I did at university. Like you guys are learning about like alternative investments. Oh, yeah. I learned about neoliberalism versus realism and political theory. But oh, well.

Well, always more to do about VCs, for sure. And we ended the year with some VC episodes recently. So go back and listen. We were recently in San Francisco, and we met with a few VCs while we were out there. Joe and I enjoyed being in San Francisco. I think we will probably be back next year. And I'm just really intrigued, you know, partially by the whole industry, but also the sort of

job lifestyle, I guess. It seems great. Yeah. Well, the idea of, you know, you go out, you meet people who are doing cool things and you decide whether or not you want to invest in them and then kind of take them on as a sort of mentee. It seems fun.

Yeah, no, plenty more to do. And you know the other thing? We've recently done some episodes where there's some big changes. Interest rates have gone up. It's not Zerp anymore, obviously. AI is sort of the new dimension. I think the other dimension, though, is that since, especially post-COVID, so many people are in the game, right? So many new entrants are trying to get VC, perhaps in part because, as you say, the lifestyle seems pretty great. You know, you wear those, like,

sneakers that look very comfortable. You just want to wear the hoodies. The hoodies is totally fine. Like you don't really have to like get dressed up and you like meet really interesting people in, in probably a way that you rarely get in most careers, except journalism perhaps. Yeah. Who wouldn't want to be into it, but you have all these changes and all this competitor. So more to do for sure on that. And plus, you know, there's a lot to do on the fact that there are a lot of tech people who,

in the new, who are going to be entering the new administration. So that should just be really interesting to see how that plays out policy-wise. Absolutely. All right, next question. What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned from your career that you wish you had known earlier? That is a very good question. Okay. I have an answer. Oh, go ahead. You know what I really wish I had learned earlier? Something I've found in that when Tracy and I interview people,

The people who are the smartest and have the most intelligent ideas about things, like the sort of best theoreticians, so to speak, are frequently among the most detail-oriented and assiduous with the facts and important names, dates, places, things like that. And I think I wish I had learned earlier in my career that there is no substitute for names, dates, and places, having them memorized and using facts upon which to build ideas.

That's a good one. Because I think when you're sort of younger, you get used to thinking about these big thinkers who they have these great ideas, but they're not that detail or technically oriented. But actually, you find that some of the people with the biggest, most interesting ideas are

Often they have all the numbers and all the facts to hand and they can walk you through the entire history of their particular segment. And learning facts and history and dates and times and places and names and acronyms does not seem as sexy as like learning some interesting theory about how the world works, etc. So when you're young...

You're sort of attracted to the former and whatever. You're attracted to the big ideas. But the people who actually have really good ideas are frequently – and I've seen this over and over again on the podcast – very well grounded in actual knowledge.

So speaking of ideas, my lesson that I wish I'd learned earlier, this is a little bit more tied to journalism. But, you know, when I first went into journalism, it was like you should be you always want to be first and you always want to be original. Yeah.

And that was success in journalism. And I think as time has gone on, I sort of realized the chances of being first to anything, and I'm talking kind of away from hard news scoops. I'm talking like scoops of ideas is what we used to call them or analysis or something like that. The chances of being truly first and original to anything are extremely, extremely low. And so I think as I've gone on, I've...

sort of come to appreciate the importance of not necessarily being first, although if that happens, absolutely fantastic, but being the person to like pull it all together the best or explain it the best or I don't know, write it in a new way that like reaches a new audience. I guess I've just become a lot more patient with coming up with things and sort of presenting them in new ways and not necessarily thinking that just because something isn't like, oh,

100% new and original that it's not worth writing.

I think this is a really good lesson. And journalists are very, we're very prideful people. And so the idea that's like, oh, someone already said this or someone sort of said this. Someone said it in the eighth paragraph of a story from six months ago. Like that doesn't mean that no one else in the world can ever talk or write or think about it ever again. There's a really good line in the movie Pulp Fiction where, you know, I can't say it on air, but he tells him not to let pride mess with his head.

And I think about that a lot with respect to journalism. Yeah. All right. Next question. What advice would you give to young professionals looking to make a meaningful impact in the financial industry?

Looking to make a meaningful impact. Well, decide what that impact is going to be, first of all, because there are different ways of having an impact. Maybe you think you would like to reform the financial industry from the inside out. That would be a pretty big impact, but also a tall order. But maybe you think that making an impact is generating wealth for yourself and your clients. I think number one is probably decide what the goal is exactly. Yeah.

You know, yeah, I would sort of say I might take a slightly different turn, which is I don't even know, you know, the idea that any of us that anyone can know what it means to have impact in any field, let alone the financial field is a very tall stretch. The career advice I always sort of give to people, though, is, you know,

So do whatever you're doing right now. Try to do it well. And that'll the better you're doing at your job right now, the more likely doors will open for you. And I'm a big believer in the cliche about how the best way to make a plan is to make God laugh or sorry, the best way to make God laugh is to make a plan. You really don't know how the future is going to turn out. If you have a plan, it's probably not going to unfold that way. So better to just focus on being good.

That's good advice, Chip. Thank you. We got one more question. Hello, Joe and Tracy. This is Cynthia from Vancouver, Canada. A question I have for Tracy is, one, if you get your chicken, what kind of asset class and market would you let your chicken trade? And second of all, what kind of trading strategy would you let them test out? And do you think they're going to beat the benchmark? Thank you.

What kind of asset class would I let my chickens trade? Do I need to explain this question? Or does everyone know that I really want to get chickens one day? Didn't a chicken do some trading?

I'm sure someone has done experiments with chickens trading stuff before. I'm just going to go with the coins. I think chickens trading a variety of SHIT coins would be an interesting one. And I think you could probably create some sort of interesting pecking mechanism for them to choose things. And I would like to watch that on a day-to-day basis. I think I'd find it soothing.

Wasn't there something, though, like where some artist taught a chicken how to trade? Am I hallucinating this? No.

There was some artist and they trained. And then it turned out, I think the whole thing was a little bit fake, but I'm Googling it. I'm not seeing it. Here's a question. There was some artist who tried to see if they could turn a chicken into a master trader by giving it sort of various Pavlovich shocks when it made a good trade or a bad trade. And then it put its beak down on a green or red button. I might be completely hallucinating this.

Maybe, Joe. Maybe we should stop taking questions. All right. That's a good place to end it. All right. Well, thank you everyone so much for listening to Odd Thoughts this year. Joe and I had an absolute blast as always. And thank you as well to everyone who sent in questions. And let's do it all again next year. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter.

And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman, Dashiell Bennett at Dashbot, and Kale Brooks at Kale Brooks. And thank you to our producer, Moses Andam. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odd Lots. We have transcripts, a blog, and a newsletter. And you can chat about all of these topics 24-7 in our Discord, discord.gg slash Odd Lots.

And if you enjoy All Thoughts, if you like it when we take your call-in questions, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.

There are two kinds of people in the world. People who think about climate change and people who are doing something about it. On the Xero podcast, we talk to both kinds of people. People you've heard of, like Bill Gates. I'm looking at what the world has to do to get to zero, not...

And Justin Trudeau. And the creative minds you haven't heard of yet. Really don't need to have a tomato in December. It's going to taste like nothing anyway. Just don't do it.

it. What we've made here is inspired by sharkskin. It is much more simplified than actual sharkskin. Drilling industry has come up with some of the most creative job titles. Yeah. Tell me more. You can imagine tool pusher. No. Driller, motorman, mudlogger. It is serious stuff, but never doom and gloom. I am Akshat Rati. Listen to Zero every Thursday from Bloomberg Podcasts on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.