Odd Lots

The Afghanistan economy was already in bad shape, with heavy reliance on foreign dollars, prior to the collapse of the government and the takeover by the Taliban. Since the fall, things have gotten even worse, with inflation accelerating and GDP plunging. There are multiple factors at work, though the main one is the cutting off of outside sources of dollars. On this episode we speak with Ajmal Ahmady, the former head of Afghanistan's central bank, on the difficult situation, and how the economy might operate going forward.

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It's no secret that one of the fun things about Odd Lots is that it covers a lot of different topics, from the plumbing of the financial system to crimes in commodities to the ongoing impact of 100-year-old laws like the Jones Act. In this episode, Joe and Tracy collect their top 10 surprising and interesting insights gleaned from Odd Lots episodes this year.

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For decades, investors have been told that diversifying is a good thing. You should hold a basket of stocks across different sectors and geographies, plus bonds, maybe some commodities or real estate, and so on. But, it turns out that you probably would have done better if you just bought large-cap US stocks in the form of an S&P 500 ETF like SPY. So why haven't diversified investments performed better? In this episode, we speak with Meb Faber, CIO of Cambria Investment Management, the host of the Meb Faber show, and the author of one of the most-downloaded research papers on SSRN. He says the last 15 years have "arguably been the worst period ever for an asset allocation portfolio.

Read more:
Great ‘Bear Market’ in Diversification Haunts Wall Street Pros
The Fate of the World’s Largest ETF Is Tied to 11 Random Millennials
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Agricultural commodities have generally surged in price over the last year. One commodity that's gone particularly wild is the coffee bean. Arabica beans — those at the premium end — are up about 100% since January 2021. So what's going on? Well, part of it is the generalized inflation, but like many other ags, weather has a lot to do with it. To start, bad weather in Brazil has had a negative impact on supply. On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Ryan Delany, a longtime player in the space and founder of the Coffee Trading Academy, to understand how this market works, and what's driven the huge price swing.

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Most people don't think much about wooden pallets -- and that might be true even of people conducting large-scale military invasions. Recent reports claim that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been hampered by a lack of pallets, making it more difficult to move the vast amounts of supplies needed to support soldiers and tanks. Meanwhile, the disruption of Ukraine's lumber industry could make a global shortage of wooden pallets even worse. On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we catch up with Marshall White, Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech, to talk about the role of the humble wooden pallet in warfare.

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