Category: Odd Lots

There’s an irony with crypto. While so much of it is ostensibly about circumventing legacy finance, many of the most important pieces of crypto infrastructure are centralized financial…

This year, everyone’s become aware of the hollowing out of U.S. semiconductor manufacturing capacity. Whether it’s the rise of TSMC, the stumbles at Intel, or the inability of…

There’s probably nobody better at synthesizing massive events like Columbia professor Adam Tooze. His book Crashed, which came out in 2018, was probably the definitive take on the…

It’s not often that lumber becomes a national obsession. But this year it has. Thanks to a combination of factors, including diminished sawmill capacity, a renovation boom, and…

There’s a huge question mark at the moment about whether markets are at some sort of important turning point. For instance, we’ve seen big amounts of fiscal stimulus…

It’s a weird moment for the markets. The big stock indices are near all time highs. And yet there have been some high profile meltdowns and blowups. There…

Whenever the government is engaging in fiscal or monetary expansion, people like to invoke the history of Weimar Germany and how soon we might all go around transporting…

When GameStop shares skyrocketed earlier this year, numerous pundits were quick to ascribe political significance to the whole thing. Was it a rebellion? Was it class warfare in…

The U.S. Treasury market is the biggest, most liquid market in the world. Its smooth functioning is also crucial to the economy and the financial system. Yet it…

In the modern age, we expect to be able to turn on our computers, enter in a ticker, and know the actual price of a financial instrument, such…