Odd Lots

Lumber prices have tumbled dramatically in recent weeks, with benchmark futures falling about 20% in the past four months alone. What's more, this is happening at the height of the summer homebuilding...

5 Jul 202427min

There aren't many advanced manufacturing success stories in Latin America. And globally, there aren't many companies that can build commercial planes at scale. Yet somehow, one of the world's leading ...

4 Jul 202457min

Brad Jacobs has made a career of starting, consolidating, and growing whole industries. He did a trucking company. He did a warehouse company. He has a freight brokerage. He created an equipment renta...

2 Jul 202448min

Does it feel to you like society has gone crazy? Well, you're not alone. There's a general view that all around the world, in the realms of politics, culture, business, and so forth, a lot of people a...

1 Jul 202450min

Neil Dutta, the top economist over at Renaissance Macro, has generally been sunny and optimistic about the economy over the last four years or so. But now he's warning of a possible mistake by the Fed...

28 Jun 202424min

From cars to toys to clothes, we're just used to seeing the label "Made In China" on all sorts of things. But how did China become a go-to destination for manufactured goods in the first place? Who ac...

27 Jun 202448min

The stock market has had a torrid run in 2024 despite the fact that interest rate cuts haven't materialized in the way people had expected at the start of the year. In fact, outside of a few blips her...

24 Jun 202446min

Everyone knows that the AI boom is built upon the voracious consumption of chips (largely sold by Nvidia) and electricity. And while the legacy cloud operators, like Amazon or Microsoft, are in this s...

21 Jun 202454min