Pod Insights Odd Lots The Odd Lots AMA Episode: Tracy and Joe Answer Listener Questions About this episode As is becoming something of an annual tradition here, we recently asked Odd Lots listeners to send in any questions they have about the show to Tracy and Joe, via voice memo. We took as many as we could, and answered questions on all kinds of things, ranging from our favorite economists to career advice to changes in how the news media operates. Become a Bloomberg.com subscriber using our special intro offer at bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. You’ll get episodes of this podcast ad-free and exclusive access to our daily Odd Lots newsletter. Already a subscriber? Connect your account on the Bloomberg channel page in Apple Podcasts to listen ad-free. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Finance is increasingly being built on digital rails, but as the adoption of virtual assets, tokenization and stable coins grows, can regulation not only keep pace, but help accelerate it? Find out more later in the podcast.
0:15 Speaker 01 Games on a break? Don't doom scroll. Try rips on Underdog. Buy a digital pack, rip it open and reveal a real physical card. Football, basketball, even Pokemon. Packs start at just $5. Ship it straight to your door or sell it back instantly at full market value. Max value up to $125,000. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Deposit $5, get five free packs. Real rips, real cards, real cash. Only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18 plus. Terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.
0:48 Speaker 02 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.
1:05 Joe Weisenthal? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.
1:10 Tracy Alloway? And I'm Tracy Alloway.
1:12 Joe Weisenthal? Uh, Tracy, it's time for our annual AMA episode.
1:15 Tracy Alloway? The annual call in show. This is my favorite time of the year, Joe.
1:18 Joe Weisenthal? Totally. It's a, it's a weird time of year, actually.
1:23 Tracy Alloway? The thing is, I feel like we're always answering questions that people ask us, right?
1:28 Joe Weisenthal? Really?
1:28 Tracy Alloway? Maybe we're too accessible.
1:30 Joe Weisenthal? No, I never feel that way. I feel like all we do is ask questions and no one ever answers, asks us questions.
1:35 Tracy Alloway? 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.
1:41 Joe Weisenthal? It's amazing that your entire job 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.
1:52 Tracy Alloway? That's not my main takeaway.
1:53 Joe Weisenthal? No, that's really interesting. That's very relevant.
1:54 Tracy Alloway? That was not my main takeaway. My main takeaway was we are question platform agnostic. Like, it doesn't really matter what
2:02 Joe Weisenthal? That's true.
2:02 Tracy Alloway? 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.
2:11 Joe Weisenthal? 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 Collins.
2:20 Tracy Alloway? It would be fun to do it live.
2:21 Joe Weisenthal? 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.
2:28 Tracy Alloway? Wait, what did you say on sports radio?
2:30 Joe Weisenthal? I don't remember the, you know, I think like I, you know, 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 gonna, you know, win the, the American league or it's just some nonsense like that.
2:44 Tracy Alloway? Sports analysis and commentary is just something I really, I struggle to get into. Cause it's like, it's either, well, the team played well, or I think the team could play better. That's it. Like, that's the sum totality of what people say on those things.
2:58 Joe Weisenthal? So yes, we are going to be, uh, we were invited listeners to record a voice memo and then email that to adla at Bloomberg.net. And, uh, let's take a listen to some and Tracy and I will do our best to, uh, answer them.
3:10 Tracy Alloway? We'll pretend that we're live.
3:11 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
3:12 Speaker 05 This is Steve from North Vale, 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.
3:38 Tracy Alloway? 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.
3:48 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah. So, you know, I've said it before. I have, uh, people from time to time to ask us, you know, if we should do a debate topic. And we may have done one or two of theirs. I, my, my, 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. Where they agree on all definitions, et cetera. And there is a very specific thing. Most debates on crypto, you get some sort of mainstream. An economist and then some sort of, you know, crazy laserized person that don't agree on anything. They just talk past each other. Not a particularly productive use. And I think
4:29 Joe Weisenthal? most debates in public forums are like that. But if we can find the right guests who largely agree on and then disagree on something specific, maybe that's a good 2025 ambition.
4:38 Tracy Alloway? I think you're right that that's kind of a difficulty there. The one other thing I would say, when it comes to crypto, the the use case or the the envisioned purpose of cryptocurrency always seems to be changing, right?
4:50 Joe Weisenthal? Sure.
4:51 Tracy Alloway? 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 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.
5:17 Joe Weisenthal? Totally. You know, I will say, we did that episode a couple of months ago with Austin Campbell. I think we're gonna have him back on soon. I'm like coming around to some some of like the stable coin stuff, maybe. Anyway, should we go to the next question?
5:30 Tracy Alloway? Next question.
5:32 Speaker 06 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 like tractor supply, which was interesting and and wood pellets and how those are logistically moved around. And 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?
6:06 Tracy Alloway? Oh, 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, 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.
6:47 Joe Weisenthal? That's a good answer. Tracy, will you shelter my family in the event of some disaster? Like, do you have enough stored away?
6:54 Tracy Alloway? No, Joe, what do you bring to the table? Other than, other than sparkling conversation?
7:00 Joe Weisenthal? 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.
7:08 Tracy Alloway? This is very true. Yeah, all right.
7:10 Joe Weisenthal? 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.
7:18 Tracy Alloway? Oh, yeah, of course.
7:19 Joe Weisenthal? I want defense spending, the defense industrial base. And if anyone listening to this has the perfect guest 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, that's a big, that's a big area that feels wide open and interesting for me next year.
7:36 Tracy Alloway? 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.
7:56 Joe Weisenthal? Oh, yeah.
7:56 Tracy Alloway? 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 contacts, send them our way as well.
8:11 Joe Weisenthal? Let's do it. Should we go to the next?
8:13 Tracy Alloway? Let's do it.
8:14 Speaker 07 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.
8:30 Tracy Alloway? Wait, Joe, did Duncan say the most embarrassing take, take, or our most embarrassing?
8:36 Joe Weisenthal? I think he said the most embarrassingly wrong take that you've had, but I don't know if it was a collective "our."
8:42 Tracy Alloway? Oh.
8:42 Joe Weisenthal? 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. I wouldn't have expected that so quickly.
9:03 Joe Weisenthal? Uh, you know, I remember we did episodes years ago about like China's like made in 2025 stuff, and I wouldn't have expected it to be as successful as it has. I wouldn't have expected inflation to persist and be as elevated as 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?
9:28 Tracy Alloway? I'm trying to think of anything like really, really bad. I would say I probably wrote my last Bitcoin obituary in like 2017. 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. Um, I'm trying to think.
9:55 Joe Weisenthal? I will say there's just no upside, right? In writing another obituary.
9:59 Tracy Alloway? No.
10:00 Joe Weisenthal? Like, what are you gonna get from that?
10:01 Tracy Alloway? No, and I will say the last obituary, here, here's a bit of 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.
10:16 Joe Weisenthal? You've learned.
10:17 Tracy Alloway? 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.
10:48 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
10:49 Tracy Alloway? It's, it's an iterative process. Let's just put it that way.
10:52 Joe Weisenthal? I'm trying to just think if there's anything else that got, I don't know, is 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.
11:08 Tracy Alloway? 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?
11:15 Joe Weisenthal? 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 US, but that in Europe, actually they have been highly disruptive. And so I'm actually giving myself a half point. This is someone reached out to me from Paris, actually. So I'm going to take a half, half credit for that. Anyway, yeah, I mostly have like modestly wrong takes rather than anything incredibly embarrassing. But Duncan, thank you for the question.
11:45 Tracy Alloway? Duncan, I will say like our takes, we try to ground them in some like reality with rational analysis and reason. So hopefully they're never too embarrassing.
11:56 Joe Weisenthal? We show our work, right?
11:57 Tracy Alloway? Yeah, we show the work. I'm sure, 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.
12:06 Joe Weisenthal? Uh, next question.
12:08 Speaker 05 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.
12:25 Tracy Alloway? 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've 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,
13:09 Tracy Alloway? 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.
13:24 Joe Weisenthal? 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.
13:42 Tracy Alloway? Concentration.
13:43 Joe Weisenthal? 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 anywhere, 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 claimed that there was interference from Russia via TikTok and so forth. And the sort of like ways that new technologies are reverberating across democracies and we
14:28 Joe Weisenthal? see change and basically everywhere, you know, numerous shocking developments everywhere. I think in part due to tech. Those to me are the three big stories right now.
14:38 Tracy Alloway? When do we get to do the drone slash UFO episode, Joe?
14:41 Joe Weisenthal? I hope. Let's, let's go to the next question.
14:45 Speaker 05 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 if, feel free to elaborate on if what your colleagues might think or who has a bigger bone to pick. Is it you as the journalist or the media company?
15:07 Tracy Alloway? Oh, this is an interesting question. I think if you had asked me this like 10 years ago, before ChatGPT and all the other variations of it became a big thing, I think I would have expected to be really annoyed at this development. 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. Um, I don't know, like I don't really feel that upset about it. Do you?
15:42 Joe Weisenthal? 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 the 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.
16:06 Tracy Alloway? 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.
16:27 Joe Weisenthal? We'll try. Actually, remind me, Tracy, I have a, I have a research project that I want to do in 2024 or 2025. I'm going to tell you about it.
16:34 Tracy Alloway? Sounds interesting.
16:35 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
16:47 Speaker 00 What's next for virtual assets? I'm Jacob Greece, host of Economy Scale, a series exploring growth in key global sectors. And in this episode, we're diving into the digital forces shaping finance. Sean McHugh from Dubai-based Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has this to say.
17:03 Speaker 05 We're seeing a lot of institutional players come in, digital asset dedicated hedge funds, high frequency traders and that sort of thing. And folks who service institutional clients.
17:12 Speaker 00 As more capital enters the market, adaptive regulation is likely to become increasingly key. Reese Merrick of Ripple says. A lot of regulators globally would like to keep the industry at arm's length. That's the opposite here. I think also what you'll find is that regulation and frameworks can Come out, but some of them are maybe a slight iteration on some 80 year old policy and not actually in line with what the technology can do and offer. And again, that's very different in Dubai. Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. This series is brought to you by Bloomberg Media Studios and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.
17:48 Speaker 01 Games on a break? Instead of doom scrolling, try rips on Underdog. Rip real player cards worth real money right there in the app. It's instant cash in the palm of your hand. Buy a digital pack, rip it open on your phone and reveal a real physical card. Football, basketball, Pokemon, yes, Pokemon and more. The best part, packs start at just $5. And if you pull something you don't want to let go of just yet, have it shipped straight to your door. Want the cash? Sell it back instantly at 100% of its fair market value. No listing, no negotiating, no stranger asking if you'll trade it for a used jet ski, even though jet skis are super sick.
18:25 Speaker 01 Best part, there are some serious grails in the mix with maximum card values reaching up to $125,000 depending on your pack tier. You can also check the live odds and see what you could pull before you rip and what other cards are being pulled by fans. Download Underdog and get in on the chase. Get five free rips packs when you deposit $5. Real rips, real cards, real cash, only on Underdog. Unleash your dog. 18 plus terms apply. Top grails are extremely rare.
18:55 Tracy Alloway? All right, next question, please. Hello, Jo and Tracy. This is Mois 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, Mois 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 economists?
19:23 Tracy Alloway? Do you think he means current or like old school economists?
19:26 Joe Weisenthal? Well, you know what? We can answer however we want and that's a good.
19:29 Tracy Alloway? Okay. Well, then I'm going to do like a massive cop out and I'm just going to say Keynes.
19:32 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
19:33 Tracy Alloway? Um, 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.
19:43 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
19:44 Tracy Alloway? 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.
20:00 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
20:01 Tracy Alloway? Those are some good quotes.
20:02 Joe Weisenthal? He's a good writer. You know, he wrote, I wasn't recently went back and you know, the last few years, people have talked about the so-called vibe session, et cetera. He talked about that quite a bit. In fact.
20:14 Tracy Alloway? But he didn't call it a vibe session.
20:16 Joe Weisenthal? 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.
20:23 Tracy Alloway? Our producer says he did call it a vibe session.
20:25 Joe Weisenthal? No, he didn't. Our producer is trolling us.
20:32 Tracy Alloway? Kale, don't do that. It's Keynes. Anything is possible.
20:36 Joe Weisenthal? Um, but he went back. I was reading something. He went, 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 afterward 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 or out of power, that people shift, that then people change their view about investment and impulse and all of 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
21:17 Joe Weisenthal? 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 vibes shift, so to speak. And this is what it means to sort of understand the economy, which I thought was really good.
21:33 Tracy Alloway? Yeah, that's pretty good. So you're also in the Keynes camp.
21:37 Joe Weisenthal? I'll go with Keynes.
21:38 Tracy Alloway? All right. Fair enough. Next question.
21:42 Speaker 02 Hi, Tracy and Joe. My name is Rosalind Looby and I live in Westport, Connecticut.
21:47 Tracy Alloway? 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.
22:16 Tracy Alloway? 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 lots 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. And I learned about neoliberalism versus realism and political theory. But, oh, well.
22:41 Joe Weisenthal? Well, always more to do about VCs, for sure. And we have, so we ended the year with some VC episodes recently. So go back and listen.
22:50 Tracy Alloway? 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.
23:08 Joe Weisenthal? It seems great.
23:09 Tracy Alloway? 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.
23:21 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah, no, plenty more to do. And you know, the other thing, we've recently done some episodes. So there's some big changes. Interest rates have gone up. It's not ZIRP 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.
23:48 Tracy Alloway? You just want to wear the hoodies.
23:49 Joe Weisenthal? The hoodies is totally fine. Like, you don't really have to like, get dressed up and you like, meet really interesting people 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. In the new, uh, who are going to be entering the new administration. So that should just be really interesting to see how that plays out policy wise.
24:19 Tracy Alloway? Absolutely. All right. Next question.
24:22 Joe Weisenthal? What are some of the biggest lessons you've learned from your career that you wish you had known earlier?
24:28 Tracy Alloway? That is a very good question. Um, okay.
24:32 Joe Weisenthal? I have an answer.
24:33 Tracy Alloway? Oh, go ahead.
24:33 Joe Weisenthal? 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, um, intelligent ideas about things like the sort of best theoreticians, so to speak, are also the most, um, 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.
25:05 Tracy Alloway? That's a good one. Cause I think when you're sort of younger, you're, 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, 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.
25:28 Joe Weisenthal? 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, et cetera. So when you're young, uh, you're, you're, you're sort of attracted to the former and, uh, whatever, you know, 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.
25:54 Tracy Alloway? So speaking of ideas, my lesson that I wish I'd learned earlier, this is a little bit more, um, 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. And that was how, you know, that was success in journalism. And I think as time has gone on, sort of realized like the chances of being first to anything, and I'm talking like kind of a way. 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
26:33 Tracy Alloway? 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 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 100% new and original, that it's not worth writing.
27:12 Joe Weisenthal? Uh, 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.
27:22 Tracy Alloway? 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.
27:31 Joe Weisenthal? There's a really good line in the movie Pulp Fiction where he, you know, I can't say it on air, but he tells him not to let pride mess, mess with his head. And I think about that a lot with respect to journalism.
27:42 Tracy Alloway? Yeah.
27:42 Joe Weisenthal? All right, next question.
27:44 Speaker 05 What advice would you give to young professionals looking to make a meaningful impact in the financial industry?
27:55 Tracy Alloway? Looking to make a meaningful impact. Well, decide what that impact is going to be.
28:01 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
28:01 Tracy Alloway? First of all, because there are different ways of having an impact. You know, 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. Like, I think number one is probably decide what the goal is exactly.
28:21 Joe Weisenthal? Um, 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, um, 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.
29:05 Tracy Alloway? That's good advice, too.
29:06 Joe Weisenthal? 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?
29:19 Tracy Alloway? 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.
29:28 Tracy Alloway? 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?
29:37 Joe Weisenthal? Didn't a chicken do some trading?
29:40 Tracy Alloway? 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 S H I T coins would be, would be an interesting one. And I think you could probably, 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.
30:04 Joe Weisenthal? Wasn't there something though, like where some artist taught a chicken how to trade? Am I hallucinating this?
30:12 Joe Weisenthal? Like there was some artist and like, and that they like trained. And then it turned out, I think the whole thing was a little bit fake, but that they, I can't, I'm like Googling it. I'm not seeing it.
30:21 Tracy Alloway? Here's a question.
30:22 Joe Weisenthal? I thought there was something like the, there was some artist who tried to see if they could turn a chicken into a master trader by giving it sort of various Pavlovic 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.
30:38 Tracy Alloway? Uh, maybe, Joe. Maybe we should stop taking questions.
30:42 Joe Weisenthal? All right, that's a good place to end it.
30:44 Tracy Alloway? All right. Well, thank you, everyone, so much for listening to Odd Lots 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?
30:57 Joe Weisenthal? Let's leave it there.
30:58 Tracy Alloway? This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alockway. You can follow me at Tracy Alockway.
31:04 Joe Weisenthal? And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Fellow or producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armin, Dashal Bennett at Dashbot, and Kel Brooks at Kel Brooks. And thank you to our producer, Moses Andam. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots. We have transcripts of blog and a newsletter, and you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.
31:27 Tracy Alloway? And if you enjoy Odd Lots, 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.
Previous The 10 Most Interesting Things We Learned on Odd Lots in 2024 Next This Is How China Builds So Much Nuclear Power Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
