Podcasts Of The Week & Weekend Reading
Betting On Politics, Expected Value & Looking At The Capital Cycle
I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend and looking forward to this week. I wanted to touch on OPEC briefly, and I promise that my post on oil that is sitting in my draft folder will be coming when I have some time in the next couple weeks to finish it up. It might turn into a solo podcast instead, but I think we are laying the foundation for the next leg higher in oil right now. OPEC continues to bring paper barrels back online, with the announcement of another 411,000 barrels a day in July. I’ll defer to
on this, but it’s worth taking a look at OPEC exports, and Saudi exports for yourself.At least for now, it doesn’t look to me like the Saudis are interested in a price war or flooding the market, but it will be interesting to watch inventories, exports, and other numbers to see what is actually happening versus what headlines are saying. If we continue on the current trajectory, it might take the market 3-6 months, or maybe sometime in 2026, but I think it is just a matter of time before the market sees the disconnect between the pessimistic narrative and reality. I have a couple very interesting videos this week, along with a couple reports that were shared with me by other readers.
Risk of Ruin: Betting On Chaos
This podcast is a little bit different, but it will definitely be thought provoking. The guest, Domer, has made a career out of betting on politics and other events on sites like Polymarket. He talked about his prop bets approach to gambling, expected value, and other things that he focuses on when it comes to trading political outcomes and appointments.
They also talked about how betting has expanded, and now you can put money down to bet on the Pope, sports, and even random stuff like the Grammys. I thought the most interesting section was the part on the French whale who put millions down on Trump winning the Presidency. I’m sure some of you might remember seeing that headline in the news, but this was my favorite podcast this week that wasn’t explicitly focused on financial markets.
Other People’s Money w/ Bob Robotti
As far as investing podcasts go, this was my favorite of the week. Robotti talked about his investing approach, the process of building his firm over the last several decades. I think his view of markets is right over the target, and I think focusing on the capital cycle can help investors avoid stepping on land mines in the market, but also help in finding opportunities that are out of favor. One of the land mines he sees is the recency bias around low interest rates, which has led to financial asset inflation for more than 15 years. One of the most interesting parts was his focus on several sectors where being located in North America is a competitive advantage due to the access to cheap energy.
He thinks this will be a durable thing that lasts at least a decade and probably longer, and will likely lead to excess returns for several sectors. This includes steel, certain industrials, and some of the chemicals and fertilizer companies. They also talked about offshore oil services, the lumber and building products sector, and why they like looking for value in cyclical industries. The last piece I’ll leave readers with from this one is why Robotti called replacement cost his true north: if you figure out how much it would cost to build a business from scratch, and you can buy it for less than that with the assumption that the business will eventually improve, you have a built in margin of safety if you have a long-term time horizon.