Top Podcasts of the Week

November 15, 2021

Below is our “Top Podcast” list with our curator, Colby Donovan!

Today we have a deep dive on investing in Eastern Europe, Freakonomics on the US venture capital industry, an episode on why socialism sucks, and an audio documentary on the rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management.

 Investing

  • LA Venture: Spencer Rascoff — 75 & Sunny. Rascoff co-founded both Zillow and Hotwire.com and also served as the CEO of Zillow. He now invests his own money through 75 & Sunny, an early stage venture fund and startup lab. In this episode, he looks back on his career and then shares some of what he’s working on now with dot.LA, a media company, and Pacaso, which helps you buy a second home with others. He discusses the benefits of being able to invest his money however he chooses and why he’s teaching an undergraduate course at Harvard on how to run a large tech company. [November 10, 2021–25 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link

  • Value Hive Podcast: Steve Gorelik: Crash Course on Eastern European Investing. Steve Gorelik is a portfolio manager at Firebird Asset Management and gives a primer on investing in Eastern Europe — countries like Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Romania. He covers the cultural differences, the importance of assessing earnings quality, and how he thinks about geopolitical risk in the region. He also walks through specific names and makes a bull case for Eastern European banks. [November 5, 2021–105 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker

  • Freakonomics Radio: 482. Is Venture Capital the Secret Sauce of the American Economy? Freakonomics takes a look at the VC industry and why it’s thrived in the US, which has 7 of the top 10 largest companies in the world, 6 of which were funded by venture capital. The episode features investors, founders, and professors explain how venture capital helps companies prosper, create jobs and innovate more compared to non-venture backed companies. It also covers why the US culture of embracing failure, having a willingness to shoot for the moon, and not fearing incumbent institutions enables venture capital to work in ways that it just can’t in places like China and Europe. [November 10, 2021–49 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link

“Really hard things are the only things worth trying.” —  Vinod Khosla

  • Risk of Ruin: Inside Long Term Capital. This audio documentary looks back on the rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management with former LTCM partner Eric Rosenfeld. It walks through the errors in risk management the firm took — becoming too levered, too concentrated, and doubling down when positions went against them — and how close the firm came to a deal with Warren Buffett. [April 12, 2021–63 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker

“We did not want to be the ones that take down the entire financial system.”

  • The Ryen Russillo Podcast: Super Bowl Team Draft, Adam Amin on the Bulls, Plus Ben Solak on Whether Twitter Is Smarter Than NFL Coaches. The Ringer’s Ryen Russillo does a segment called “Life Advice” when people write in with life questions. If you want to hear a real-life example of what happens when companies and prominent people encourage others to engage in “YOLO” options trading and treat the market like an arcade game, listen from 1:28:30 to the end of the episode. [November 12, 2021–111 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link

The Meb Faber Show

  • #366 — Darius Dale, 42 Macro — Reflation Is Now The Dominant Market Regime. Darius Dale is founder and CEO of 42 Macro, which specializes in macro risk management through the dual lenses of asset allocation and portfolio construction. Darius walks through his framework for analyzing macro regimes and then uses it to assess where we stand today. He touches on all the hot macro topics — whether inflation is transitory, the impact of supply chain issues, and how the rise of populism in the U.S. can impact markets. Darius walks through charts during the episode, so you can either watch it on YouTube or click here to follow along the slides yourself. [November 8, 2021–86 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link

  • #367 — Robert Lawson, SMU — Initially This Whole Thing Was A Tax Dodge So I Could Go Drink In Cuba. Robert Lawson is the director of the Bridwell Institute for Economic Freedom at (SMU) and author of Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World, which is the focus on the episode. Robert traveled around the world to visit socialist countries to get a first hand look at how awful the quality of life is. He starts by defining what true socialism is, why Sweden isn’t actually a socialist country, and then looks at Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea to see what true socialism looks like in the world today. Next, he discusses why socialism has a false utopian vision for the world and the reasons why this terrible idea just won’t go away. At the end of the episode, Bob and Meb chat about some current topics in the U.S., including UBI, student-loan forgiveness, and the lack of financial education in schools. [November 10, 2021–57 minutes] iTunes Podcast | Spotify | Google | Breaker | Website Link

Good investing,Meb Fabertheideafarm.com