Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway explore the most interesting topics in finance, markets and economics. Join the conversation every Monday and Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points as expected. But it also raised its inflation outlook for 2025, and sees just two more cuts next year. The markets reacted violently to it, with the major measures posting their worst day in a long time. What's more, there was nowhere to hide. Bonds and gold also sold off, alongside equities. So what's going on now? And what does this mean for portfolio construction? On this episode, we speak with Jim Caron, chief investment officer of the Portfolio Solutions Group at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. We talked about why the market reacted as sharply as it did, and how to think about next year, given highly concentrated markets, uncertain macro, and the difficulty in finding diversifying instruments.
Read More: Powell Says Future Cuts Would Require Fresh Inflation Progress
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The world of startup investing has undergone massive transformations amid the AI boom, changing capital markets, and an intense degree of competition from new entrants into the space. So what does it take to succeed in venture capital? How does an investor know if they have what it takes? On this episode, recorded in San Francisco, we speak with Nina Achadjian, a partner at Index Ventures. She talks about her career, how she differentiates herself from other investors, and the sectors she's most excited about, including what areas are poised to benefit from AI.
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One of the minor culture wars in America has to do with electric stoves. To some, they're more energy efficient and better for air quality. To others, electric stove requirements represent government overreach, and a loss of freedom to use a gas range. Impulse Labs wants to change the whole conversation. The company produces an induction stove — very different than most electric stoves — that it claims can not only produce superior food, but can also be a catalyst for electrification, thanks to its built-in battery storage. On this episode, we visited the Impulse offices in San Francisco to try out the stove ourselves and talk to CEO Sam D'Amico about the company's vision. We also discuss how a stove maker based in the US thinks about the grid, tariffs, buying batteries, and other challenges that come with selling a physical consumer product.
Read More: How Did Gas Stoves Ignite a Culture War?
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Geothermal is a promising technology to provide clean, low-cost, baseload power to the electricity grid. It works by getting heat from deep in the ground, using technology that is similar to that used in fracking. Despite this potential, however, geothermal still remains a very small percentage of the US power mix. So what will it take for it to scale up? One big challenge is the core problem of financing. Firms need customers in order to get financing. But customers don't want to sign up for projects unless firms can finance them and get them built. On this episode, recorded live onstage at the Department of Energy's Deploy24 conference in Washington DC, we speak with Tim Latimer, the founder and CEO of geothermal company Fervo Energy. Tim was previously in the fracking industry. He explained to us how geothermal works, what's being built, and what it will take from private and public actors in order to scale it up.
Read More:
A Green Reason to Drill, Baby, Drill: Renewable Energy That’s Always On
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You can do a lot of things with the click of a button nowadays. You can get insurance, open a bank account, or trade 347 different stocks all at once via an ETF. But one thing you definitely can't do via a single click, is refinance your mortgage. In fact, securing a mortgage still requires reams of paperwork -- a lot of which has to be physically mailed to all the different parties involved. So why is mortgage finance stuck in the stone age? In this episode we speak with Mike Yu, co-founder and CEO of Vesta, about why we don't have one-click mortgages refis. He describes how a mix of clunky legacy IT systems and regulation have combined to make mortgage finance a technological laggard.
Read More:
US Home-Purchase Applications Rise to Highest Since February
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AI software and the hardware that enables it have been hugely popular investments this year. But there have still been limiting factors on the sector, including a shortage of compute to power so many new start-ups. Investors don't want to finance companies that lack a signed contract for compute, and compute providers don't want to sign contracts for startups that haven't already secured funding. Now Magnetar, a hedge fund which started its first ever venture capital fund earlier this year, is trying to solve this "chicken and egg" problem by offering compute in exchange for equity. Magnetar was an early investor in the AI space, partnering with Coreweave and recently helping the hyperscaler to raise $7.5 billion. On this episode, we speak with Jim Prusko, partner and senior portfolio manager on Magnetar's alternative credit and fixed income team, about why the hedge fund is getting into venture capital and some of the new ways they're deploying money in the space.
Read More: Magnetar Starts First-Ever Venture Fund, Targets Generative AI
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In the 2010s, we saw an incredible boom in the venture capital space, fueled in part by cheap capital as well as cheap compute. Fast forward to today, and many things look very different. We're not in the ZIRP era anymore. And computing power has become a scarce resource, particularly when it comes to AI. So how do things look different today from the perspective of a veteran venture capitalist? In this episode, recorded live in San Francisco in November, we speak to Ethan Kurzweil, a founder and managing partner at the new VC firm Chemistry. Ethan spent years at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he was involved in numerous software deals. He talks to us about his strategy for the new fund, the case for starting a small firm, what technologies excite him most right now, and the general landscape for seed-stage investing.
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For years, investors have relied on the classic 60/40 portfolio of stocks and bonds. The idea behind this was simple: bonds tend to go up when stocks go down, so the two things should act as a natural hedge. But when inflation spiked in 2022 and 2023, the 60/40 portfolio performed terribly and bonds failed to act as a safety cushion. In this episode, we speak with Nouriel Roubini, chief economist and portfolio manager of the new Atlas America Fund, an ETF that is trying to create a new type of safe asset that can withstand big risks, including stagflation, deficits, and de-dollarization. We also talk about the outlook for the US economy in 2025, and the big risks that the chief economist and portfolio manager of the Atlas America Fund sees on the horizon.
Read more: Roubini Launches Treasury-Alternative ETF to Ride Trump-Era Risk
Crypto Critic Nouriel Roubini Is Working on a Tokenized Dollar Replacement
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It's trite to say that there is a high degree of uncertainty right now, for macro forecasters and investors. It also happens to be true. The new administration is promising major policy changes in areas like tariffs, immigration, and the size and scope of government. But even beyond that, there is near-term uncertainty over the outlook for the labor market and inflation. Furthermore, we're in an era of high stock valuations, high market concentration, and the AI wildcard. So in light of all this, we talked to Jan Hatzius, the Chief Economist and Head of Global Investment Research, and David Kostin, Goldman's top equity strategist, about what they're looking for in the year ahead.
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The election of Donald Trump, with his promise of more tariffs and a much tighter stance on immigration is a source of major macro uncertainty. To some it marks the end of a certain neoliberal consensus about globalization, and the pre-eminent role played by financial markets. According to today's guest, we're at the beginning of a long, turbulent period that may not be resolved for two decades to come. On this episode, we speak with macro strategist Viktor Shvets, and author of the new book, The Twilight Before the Storm: From the Fractured 1930s to Today's Crisis Culture. He talks about the big rethink that's underway on a whole host of issues that pertain to the global economy, starting with trade, and why it will take years for the dust to settle.
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When it comes to credit investing (or really any investing), there's an analytic art in deciding the right price to pay for a security. But often that's only part of the challenge. First you need someone to want to sell it to you. In something like public-market equity, this usually isn't hard. Liquidity is deep, and the "ask" price is well known. In something like private credit, it's much trickier. Someone has to sell you the deal. Someone has to call you about it and tell you about it. So how do you get the call? And how do you know when to say yes? On this episode, we speak with Milwood Hobbs, the Managing Director and Head of Sourcing & Origination at Oaktree. Prior to this role, he was at Goldman Sachs, also in leveraged finance origination and sales. So he's been involved in numerous credit deals in his career. On this episode, he talks us through his role, what's involved in it, how he gets offered deals, and how he determines what opportunities are better or worse.
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