Lots More on the Protests and Financial Crisis in Iran

One of the extraordinary elements of the civil unrest taking place in Iran is that it's almost impossible to know what's going on. There's a virtually complete news blackout, in part because of the government shutting down the internet. What this means in practice right now is that someone on the outside can't even know for sure whether the Iranian stock market has been trading lately, or whether it's been halted. And then of course there are bigger questions about the scale of the civil unrest and the government's response to it. On this episode of Lots More, we check in with recurring guest Maciej Wojtal, the founder and CIO of Amtelon Capital, one of the few international firms to have direct exposure to Iranian stocks. We talk about what he's been able to ascertain about the protests, why they're taking place, Iran's ongoing financial crisis, and why this round of civil unrest is different from before. READ MORE: How Iran Sanctions and a Currency Crash Triggered Mass ProtestsSubscribe to the Odd Lots NewsletterJoin the conversation: discord.gg/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Joe Weisenthal?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Tracy and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis, but sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and need to know what's moving markets and why. That's the Barclays Brief Podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and research get you up to speed on what matters and what to watch next, about the time it takes to grab a coffee. So, search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk, and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs, and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors,

• 1:11Speaker 01

  and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 1:51Tracy Alloway?

  Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

• 1:56Tracy Alloway?

  Joe, do you like Persian food?

• 1:58Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely.

• 1:59Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah. I make, I'm very proud of this, if I say so myself, Ameen Gourmet Sapsi. I actually don't know if I'm pronouncing it wrong, but supposedly it's the Iranian national dish. And it's a sort of like beef stew with spinach and a bunch of different herbs in it. So it's really green and then with kidney beans. It's delicious. And the thing I like about it is you can make it and then store it, freeze it, and it actually gets better over the next week or so.

• 2:29Joe Weisenthal?

  I, this is my idea for a restaurant, which is just like, make food and then put it in the fridge overnight and then serve it cold. Cause I think like every dish, every dish is better like after a night in the fridge. Somehow like all the flavors come out. I was like, why don't we just make this the default eating?

• 2:47Joe Weisenthal?

  I did a dead list.

• 2:48Tracy Alloway?

  I am both the most popular trader and most successful trader at Citadel.

• 2:53Joe Weisenthal?

  Feta's going viral.

• 2:54Tracy Alloway?

  Uh, barges.

• 2:55Joe Weisenthal?

  This is an Ectus call special, except.

• 2:57Tracy Alloway?

  I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

• 3:03Joe Weisenthal?

  Black Gold.

• 3:04Tracy Alloway?

  These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

• 3:07Joe Weisenthal?

  No, I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast. One day that person will have the mandate of heaven.

• 3:17Tracy Alloway?

  How do I get more popular and successful?

• 3:19Joe Weisenthal?

  We do have. The perfect guest.

• 3:22Tracy Alloway?

  You're listening to Lots More, where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now.

• 3:27Joe Weisenthal?

  Because even when the Odd Lots is over, there's always lots more.

• 3:30Tracy Alloway?

  And we really do have the perfect guest.

• 3:35Tracy Alloway?

  So I'm a big fan of Iranian food. I always wanted to go to Iran and actually try it.

• 3:39Joe Weisenthal?

  Yes.

• 3:40Tracy Alloway?

  And it makes me sad that I haven't been able to do it. And with, you know, recent events, terrible events in Iran, we've had anti-Islamic Republic protests that have reportedly left thousands of people dead. I'm not going to say the specific estimate because it's changing all the time. And also there's not that much transparency at the moment because the government has shut down the entire internet, but it's just sad.

• 4:05Joe Weisenthal?

  Look, I know very little about Iran. I also feel like in my professional career.

• 4:12Joe Weisenthal?

  There are multiple rounds of this.

• 4:14Tracy Alloway?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:15Joe Weisenthal?

  Big protests, et cetera. Is this the moment? Regime change. And to your point, which you say, like, there is very little that I trust when I see it reported.

• 4:24Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Joe Weisenthal?

  I am extremely skeptical. Oh, tonight was the biggest set of protests we've had in years. There's never been a protest. Look at which city this is. I'm sure there are well-informed people talking about this. I don't have the heuristics to know. Generally, I don't know who is well-informed. What is actually signal versus what is noise? But obviously, yet another sort of extraordinary development unfolding here in 2026.

• 4:49Tracy Alloway?

  Monta, what have you been hearing?

• 4:51Speaker 03

  So I agree that it's difficult really to tell what are the actual facts. For sure, there's been a lot of deaths. And it's horrible and it's tragic and it's definitely thousands of deaths. But at the same time, you know, there's complete blackout. What works right now is the actually outgoing landlines calls, but with limited time. So, for example, my, one of my analysts, who is actually in London at the moment, he's able to speak to his parents when they call him. And then the call gets interrupted quite quickly, but at least he can hear from them. We weren't actually sure for quite some time whether the stock market was working or not because of the blackout, because it was not possible to even to read any news from the official news agencies in Iran.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  So everything was down, including, from what I've read, including even like the internal domestic, like an internet network in Iran that is, that is very controlled. This was, this was also down. Even ATMs stopped working for a moment, I think, just like a one day, brief moment. Cash transfers were working, bank transfers. Apparently, the local, you know, Uber equivalent called Snap was working all the time. However, GPS was not working properly, so it was difficult to locate the driver and so on. So exactly what you said, it's, it's, it's difficult to understand exactly what is going on.

• 6:13Tracy Alloway?

  So this is, of course, Macha Voitil. He is the CEO of Amtelon Capital, which is a fund that specializes in Iranian equities. And there aren't that many of those around.

• 6:23Joe Weisenthal?

  I don't even know if there's a second one.

• 6:25Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, so we enjoy talking to him and he has really good insights into what is actually happening on the ground in Iran. The first question I should ask directly is, is your team OK? Are they safe and well, the people that you actually have in the country?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Thank you for asking about that, Tracy. We have, we have a local team in Tehran, part of which is actually in London at the moment. Now analysts who are in Tehran, who were in Tehran, they left Tehran a few days ago when the protests were getting more intense to smaller cities, to their hometowns. So the last time we've heard from them was a couple of days ago. At that time, they were, they were in a safe place. So I believe they're, they're all fine.

• 7:06Joe Weisenthal?

  I mean, just your intuition, let's actually set aside the question of like, is this a moment where the regime would get toppled or something like that? Let's set it, does this feel either quantitatively or qualitatively different from various episodes over the last two decades, in which suddenly the internet is looking at fairly blurry videos of Iranian protesters and asking like, does this feel different somehow?

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Yes, it definitely does.

• 7:34Joe Weisenthal?

  OK.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  So first of all, obviously, looking at, you know, the history, it teaches you not to get excited or to, I don't know, hopeful for any meaningful changes. However, it does feel different. And maybe, maybe two things could be interesting here. First of all, as you said, Joe, at the beginning, it's, it's not the first protest. It's, you know, another protest over the years. And if you look at comparable situations, for example, Poland, Poland is always close to my heart, I'm Polish originally. And Poland, when we were trying to get rid of the Soviet Union, it took nine years. And every year, there was a massive protest. This protest, you know, died and then, you know, with very brutal reaction from, from

• 8:18Speaker 03

  the government, then the next year, there was another protest. In the meantime, there was martial law. You know, military on the streets and so on. But finally, many things came together. And there was a tipping point at which everything collapsed. Although it didn't collapse, actually, it was it was a negotiated transition to a different regime. So, you know, the establishment got a got an off ramp to move on and it was a peaceful negotiated transition. Similar in South Africa, based on what I know, I mean, it was, you know, happening in the eighties and then in the nineties. There were actual changes. In Iran, the situation is different because for many reasons, demographics have changed.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  So now you have, I believe, around ninety three million people, out of which fifty million is between, you know, fifteen and forty nine years old. But like the active part of the population. And there are many more young people who are educated, who have, you know, access to internet, have their own aspirations. And they don't believe they can achieve those aspirations in the current environment. And they also look at their parents and they think that they just wasted the whole generation, you know, waiting and doing nothing. So this makes them more angry and also like more decisive and confrontational. Now, that's why I think it's, you know, the protests were so intense and so widespread.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  Another reason, another thing that's changed is, like, you remember a few years ago, three, twenty twenty two, there were, and twenty three, there were protests around social freedoms after an Iranian girl, Marsha Amini, died. And this was driven by, basically by social freedoms and mainly involved young people. Right now is driven by economic difficulties. And this is, this touches every every single household in Iran.

• 10:09Tracy Alloway?

  Yeah, I wanted to ask you about precisely this because the, I don't want to say the cause of the recent unrest, but certainly one of the sparks seems to have been a further collapse in the currency, even higher inflation and. Wasn't there something about a bank?

• 10:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:25Tracy Alloway?

  As well, a bank that was going bust, supposedly with ties to the regime. How much did financial stress play into the current round of civil unrest?

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Well, 100%, this was the main cause. Look, the protest started on the Grand Bazaar in Tehran.

• 10:41Tracy Alloway?

  Right.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  So these bazaris, I mean, people who operate bazaars, they, many of them run like multimillion dollar revenue companies there, actually. It's like this massive shopping mall with tens of thousands of, you know, smaller or bigger traders there. And they need stability to just, you know, do business, right? So protesting, revolution, like this is the last thing they would think about. But they are in a situation, you know, where many of them are importers. To import, you need to be able to obtain a hard currency to just pay your supplier from Vietnam, China, whoever. It's impossible to obtain, to access hard currency, or there's not enough of it. And that's obviously because of sanctions. Because of sanctions, exports of Iran just went down.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Iran is exporting oil only to China, so China is dictating all the terms, including big discounts in the price that they are paying. But also the terms of the payment, you know, the China is paying, a big part of their payments are in yuan and they, and they arrive in bank accounts in some Chinese banks. So Iran, you know, the only thing Iran can do with it is to buy some Chinese goods. And what Iran needs is, is to pay for essential goods, like, you know, some food products or some medical products that they need to import at, at any cost. And once they allocate all their hard currency reserves to those essential products, there is not much left for other businesses. So this is one thing that is difficult to run a business when you cannot obtain currency.

• 12:06Speaker 03

  You have, you know, inflation running wild, but on the other hand, your consumers are losing their purchasing power at an extraordinary pace. So no one is buying, basically, right? You have to spend on, you know, eggs, milk and bread, probably, you know, more than 10% of your average monthly salary. So it looks, it looks really difficult on the economic side.

• 12:29Tracy Alloway?

  Can I ask very quickly, do you have a sense of what the current exchange rate actually is? Because, you know, this is one of the few currencies in the world that we cannot look up on a Bloomberg terminal.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's around 1.5 million real per one dollar, which means it went down around 97, 98% over the last decade. And around 50, almost 50% since before the war with Israel last year. So over the last seven months. So it's really, it's really falling fast. Oh, and one more thing, you asked about the bank. Yes, actually, there was a bank collapsing in Iran just a few months ago. I mean, they formally recognized that it should be nationalized. And it's extraordinary because the size of the collapse, it was so big that it actually affected the budget of the country, the country budget for this year.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  So they had to reduce subsidies and, and just change, you know, the expenditures of the budget to make room for the amount that they had to, I think it was like $5 billion that they had to put into this bank so that it doesn't, you know, collapse. It was basically, and it's another, it's another example that, you know, makes people angry, obviously, because it's, it's, it was a huge example of corruption. So, you know, there was a local, well-connected entrepreneur who was running a few construction companies. And it wasn't the case that, you know, he called a few banks NF for some preferential loans. Now he set up a bank, offered the highest interest rates on the market. So many people just put their deposits into this bank. And then he was using those deposits to make loans to his own companies.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  I think it was like a majority of the loans were to his own companies. He built the biggest shopping mall in the, in the region, which was, you know, a crazy idea from the beginning and many things like this, right? So another example of thornism and corruption.

• 14:21Tracy Alloway?

  This is the shopping mall that's like as big as the Pentagon or something?

• 14:24Joe Weisenthal?

  Yeah, twice as big. Oh, wow. Corey, I, I read that Wall Street Journal article, twice as big as the Pentagon, this luxury shopping mall in Iran, suffering from massive hyperinflation and all the sorts. But I have to say, starting your own bank to then just fund your construction company, A, kind of a brilliant idea. B, this is why bank supervision and various things.

• 14:47Tracy Alloway?

  Is important.

• 14:47Joe Weisenthal?

  Actually exist.

• 15:01Tracy Alloway?

  There are some market stories where you want every detail. Joe and I have made quite a few podcasts on that basis. But sometimes you've only got 10 minutes and just want to know what's moving markets fast. That's the Barclays Brief podcast. Every week, experts from Barclays Markets and Research get you up to speed on what's happening and what to watch next. Concise, focused, and brief. Search Barclays Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 16:10Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 16:51Joe Weisenthal?

  It's surreal to me, this reality of here is a country that right now is a de facto information black hole. You mentioned, we don't know if the stock market is trading. Here's a country on earth and right now where we are in New York or where you are in London, we can't even answer the simple question, is the stock market functioning right now?

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So all the stories that I that I hear is that the way people were able to communicate is because someone had access to a Starlink operating in Iran, or someone's friend was working at a hospital and hospital had some access to either the wide internet or some of these local networks. So that's why also it's not possible for the country to keep the blackout at this scale and intensity for too long. Because, you know, the whole economy stops, right? Actually, the administration of the country is not possible, right? Without without internet. So it was it was sharp, intense, but it has to be short term because otherwise, you know, the country will will just stop.

• 17:55Tracy Alloway?

  What happens to your portfolio in this particular scenario, your investments?

• 18:01Speaker 03

  So the stock market seems to have been stable over the last week. I don't see the exact numbers yet in terms of, for example, liquidity. And I and I suspect that, you know, there was not much going on because I'm not sure if even local investors had a chance to were able to put orders online, right? Maybe maybe it was old school, you know, calling your broker or going to your broker. So it was stable. So nothing actually. Actually, it went up by 4% and the currency was stable, too. The currency is easier to manipulate by by the central bank using some reserves, especially when when there was low liquidity. So I think what will be more interesting is the next few weeks. So for example, what happened last year after the war, when there was a war between Iran and Israel in June?

• 18:47Speaker 03

  The stock market was shut down for around two weeks. After it reopened, the prices didn't change much, but then local investors, mainly retail investors, it's a retail-driven market, started selling because they didn't have access to their funds. So they started selling at any price just to get money out. And there was a massive selling pressure that lasted from July until September. And when the buyers saw a selling pressure like this, so every day you can see the queue of unfilled orders building up, they will go to the next day and the next day and the next day. Those people just stopped buying as well, obviously. So the market went down like irrespective of, you know,

• 19:30Speaker 03

  which stocks, what quality, what valuation, whatever, just a massive sell-off, which lasted two, three months, and then it rebounded. So it went down like in dollar terms from let's say index of, I don't know, three hundred sixty to two hundred thirty, yes, if I'm, if I'm looking at at this correctly, so let's say thirty-six percent in dollar terms in just two and a half months. The selling pressure then was exhausted, all the selling, all the sales were absorbed. Valuations went down to the, one of the, I think, very close levels to the like all-time lows in the history of the of the Iranian stock market, which is around twenty years old. So, you know, it's always cheap, but this time it went, you know, below

• 20:13Speaker 03

  three times net earnings, a median, median for the market, right? So you could probably find stocks, you know, at two times earnings. Then it rebounded, but it's still around, you know, like three and a half times earnings. So valuations are very much still driven by war. So everything is priced for war, right? So that's, that's the sentiment hasn't really recovered after the last war and now we had protests. So everything in Iran is priced for war, basically.

• 20:38Joe Weisenthal?

  You know, in the news, obviously, we hear, or I think we get a better grasp, and again, I plead a lot of ignorance, that's not something I have a lot of familiarity with, but what the protesters want. You hear about young people and wanting more freedoms. Can you give a sort of, I don't know, political economy breakdown of like, you know, you don't hear about the people who obviously don't want regime change. Generally speaking, they, we don't know much about them or who they are. Who are the sort of different factions socio-economically that, and how they allocate to either side, sort of, I guess, a class understanding of the tensions?

• 21:19Speaker 03

  So, there is a big group of young people, and young people want freedom and opportunities, and like fair rules in the economy, basically. There are older people, adults, in larger cities, which are more liberal. Definitely Tehran, Tehran is a big city, it's like 12 million people altogether. And Tehran, life in Tehran looks different to most other cities in Iran, with, you know, women no longer wearing hijabs, it's much more open, it's much more liberal. But also, there is a big group of people who are very, very religious, and they support the government that is also, there is a religious government.

• 22:02Speaker 03

  So the concept of Islamic Republic is very close, close to their heart, and they support it. And it's part of their religion and part of their traditions. So, in terms of, you know, the, how they observe religious holidays, you know, going to mosque, dressing in a certain way, and so on. And now, how does this split? I would say that probably between 10 and 30% is the religious part, 10, like, very religious, and just listening to the prayer, and, you know, whatever political advice comes from the mosque and so on. 30% of, I'd say, a third of the society, just being religious and supporting the Islamic Republic in the, as a religious state. Just a small note that it's a

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Islamic Republic, but very tolerant of of other religions. I mean, all the churches work normally there from Jewish to Christian to Zoroastrian. You know, everyone is doing his own thing in terms of religion in Iran and it's and it's okay. So and the rest are people who want a modern, open state with the young, including the young people who want it fast, basically, and and and want to be able to follow their dreams and aspirations. So so so that would be the breakdown.

• 23:15Tracy Alloway?

  So I should just say we're recording this on January fifteenth. The headlines are coming pretty fast nowadays. So who knows what will happen by the time we publish this episode in just twenty four hours or so. But the latest headline is that tensions seem to have eased a little bit with the US because the Iranian government said they're not going to kill any more people or told Trump they're not going to execute more people. How should we interpret that? Is this all over or do you expect some unrest to continue?

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Well, it's hard to predict. It's it's it's very unpredictable. I mean, unrest is difficult to predict, the dynamics around the unrest. Then, you know, the government of Iran is difficult to predict. But, you know, the government of the US is difficult to predict because, you know, right now, yesterday, today, yesterday, you had news, you you had news that President Trump was saying that, yes, he got information that, you know, killing stopped. So this is what he was, you know, what he wanted to achieve. So it looks better. The day before, everyone thought that, you know, they are getting ready to strike Iran. So I think those things can change in twenty four hours. So it's it's it's just impossible to predict. The only thing I would I would say is that because it does feel different this time, the scale of the protests and the reasons of the protests,

• 24:32Speaker 03

  and also the government just can't spend, you know, their way out of the problem. It's it's the the financial situation is really tough. But some changes are likely. I'm not saying that within the next few days or weeks, maybe it will take months. But I think it's just moving this direction. So there are some changes that are likely and many scenarios are possible. I mean, look at Venezuela. There was no regime change there. Right? I mean, there was a like, again, negotiated solution with, you know, Maduro taken out and and the rest of the government and establishment just staying in place. But but they have to cooperate. Right? So there's probably more than one scenario possible for the future.

• 25:15Tracy Alloway?

  What a world we live in where civil unrest is becoming a major investment theme. Thank you, Masha, for coming on Lots More. Really appreciate another update from you.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 25:31Joe Weisenthal?

  Lots More is produced by Carmen Rodriguez and Dashil Bennett with help from Moses Andam and Kale Brooks.

• 25:37Tracy Alloway?

  Our sound engineer is Blake Maples.

• 25:42Joe Weisenthal?

  Please rate, review, and subscribe to Odd Lots and Lots More on your favorite podcast platforms.

• 25:48Tracy Alloway?

  And remember that Bloomberg subscribers can listen to all our podcasts ad free by connecting through Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening.

• 25:59Speaker 04

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• 27:05Speaker 06

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