Odd Lots Bloomberg

Multi-strategy hedge funds are all the rage right now. But there's also a lot of confusion about what exactly they do, and how the the so-called "pod shops" differ from more traditional hedge funds. In this episode of the podcast, we speak with Giuseppe 'Gappy' Paleologo, a long-time veteran of the space. In addition to writing books about quantitative finance, Gappy was director of risk and quantitative analysis at Citadel and head of enterprise risk at Millennium, among many other jobs. He walks us through what multi-strat traders actually do all day, what makes for a good multi-strat candidate, and how to win in the pod shop game.
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Copper has long been touted as a big winner from the world's drive towards electrification. All those electric vehicles and new grids need lots of the metal to work. At the same time, since it takes years for new copper mining capacity to actually come on stream, many people expect a long-term shortage of the metal to materialize. But despite all that excitement, copper prices actually fell over the past few years. Now, copper bulls are getting another chance as the metal surges towards a new record. So why didn't the thesis play out before? And what does the mismatch between short-term prices and long-term supply actually mean for the world? In this episode, we speak to Jeff Currie, a long-time copper bull and commodities veteran who's now at Carlyle Group. We talk to him about why copper is his highest-conviction trade ever, plus the outlook for oil and big changes in petrodollars.
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Pierre Andurand made his name trading oil and other energy-related assets, but wild swings in the price of cocoa have recently lured the founder of Andurand Capital Management into a new market. He bet on cocoa earlier this year and saw the trade pay off as the price of the beans surged to a record $12,000 a ton. Prices have since fallen back to around $7,800, but Andurand sees scope for further upside as extreme deficits in the building blocks of chocolate loom. In this episode, we talk about how he entered the cocoa market, how he formed his investment thesis, and potential interest in other soft commodities, like coffee and orange juice. We also talk about copper, where a similar story of structural shortages is now playing out in prices.
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This week, we'll get fresh inflation data in the US, which will inevitably feed into the Federal Reserve's future decisions to raise, hold or lower benchmark interest rates. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is preparing to announce new tariffs aimed at curbing Chinese imports in key industries, including electric vehicles, batteries and solar cells. On this episode, we speak to Odd Lots favorite Viktor Shvets. The Macquarie strategist has a way of threading the needle between major global events and reaching back into history to provide context for our current macroeconomic moment. He describes the US central bank as a prisoner of its own policies, namely data dependency and the "dot plot." Meanwhile, China faces "massive" overcapacity problems as more and more countries put up barriers to its exports. We also talk about generational shifts and what they mean for investment.
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There's a lot going on in currency markets and global trade at the moment. The Japanese yen has been falling, even after authorities seemed to intervene to try to arrest the slide. Meanwhile, weakness in the Chinese yuan has helped boost that country's exports and is fueling talk of a new "China Shock" for the rest of the world, even as its economy continues to grapple with slower economic growth and excess capacity. In this episode of Lots More, we bring back Brad Setser, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to walk us through these developments, along with his new paper, "Power and Financial Interdependence." We also talk about what China's excavator exports can tell us about its economy.
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Hugh Hendry says the world is brimming with risks right now, from Chinese deflation, to the strength of the US dollar, to unrealized losses in US Treasuries held by the bank. In the new episode of the podcast, we speak with the former manager of the Eclectica hedge fund, who now writes and operates under the Acid Capitalist branding. Hendry, who now resides in St. Bart's, says that the most important story in the world, and for as long as he's been in markets, has been the rise of China, which he sees as inflating asset values all around the world. Specifically, he sees a broken model, in which the country's GDP grows rapidly, but domestic investments and household income don't keep up. He warns of a risk of a yuan devaluation, as the country seeks to maintain its export drive which, he warns would create "Mad Max" deflation. He also talks about the "terrifying" drop in the Japanese yen, and the unusual situation by which the US is one of the world's growth leaders. 
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