Nick Denton's Big Bet Against the United States

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, what do you think the rich people are doing these days? You know, like, I know there's a lot of, like, big business people lining up, or who have lined up behind the Trump administration, but they have to be kind of anxious, right? Because things like mass tariffs and so forth talk about reducing the role of the dollar in global trade. It's got to make them kind of anxious.

Tracy Alloway (0:46)

I actually know the answer to this.

SPEAKER_2 (0:48)

Oh, yeah?

Joe Weisenthal (0:49)

As a rich person?

Tracy Alloway (0:50)

No. No. Because the New York Fed publishes a survey of consumer sentiment where you can break it out by pay bracket. And so the highest pay bracket, it's probably not the super, super rich, but it is pretty rich. And yeah, they're getting worried for all the reasons you just laid out.

Joe Weisenthal (1:09)

But I do think if you exist in a pay bracket, that already sort of suggests that you're not that rich. You're not the real, you're getting a pay.

Tracy Alloway (1:17)

What high standards you have, Joe.

Joe Weisenthal (1:19)

But anyway, I think these are really interesting times, needless to say, for the globe, for people who have money, for people who have feet around the world where they want to bet. One of the things I wrote about it last week, we're recording this March 25th, one of the big trades that really had been characterized for the last 15 years is like bet on the US literally against everything else.

Tracy Alloway (1:43)

Right, buy the S&P 500

Joe Weisenthal (1:44)

And just, you get no payment for global diversification. You didn't make any money in China, you lost money. You didn't get any pay for EM. You didn't really get anything in Europe. At least for a couple of weeks so far this year, that's reversed pretty sharply. And so one question is like, if you want glory, should you look outside the US borders these days?

Tracy Alloway (2:02)

Right. Diversification finally potentially paying off, although again, it's only been like three weeks.

Joe Weisenthal (2:07)

I know, and you got to be careful at this time.

Tracy Alloway (2:09)

We have seen a lot of people, in fact, we've recorded episodes about this, talking about how this is a huge sea change in global politics, potentially in global markets as well. This big moment similar to the fall of the Soviet Union, something that could forever alter Europe's economic and political and security path. So we'll see.

Joe Weisenthal (2:30)

Big things are happening. Germany is like, we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense, which they really never done.

Tracy Alloway (2:37)

That's a big deal.

Joe Weisenthal (2:38)

So anyway, I'm really excited about our guest. Someone I've known and talked to numerous times over the years, but we've never had on the podcast, luminary in the world of journalism, previously a financial journalist, an interesting guy who suddenly popped up, he started posting again recently. And so I was like, oh, maybe he's in New York City these days. We're going to be speaking with Nick Denton. He used to work at the FT. We're used to work. And he wrote a book. And most people would probably know him as the founder of the Gawker family of websites. He currently is a new thing called a Futura Kiado, which is going to be some sort of journalism trading kind of hybrid. Maybe we'll find out what that is. Nick, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.

Nick Denton (3:19)

It's going to be fun. I can tell.

Joe Weisenthal (3:20)

I have a question. I've known you for a long time, but I've never asked you this. I actually don't know the answer to this. How would you describe your political ideology? The reason I ask is that, you know, like...

Tracy Alloway (3:32)

Starting with an easy question.

Joe Weisenthal (3:33)

No, I'm just going to say the most awkward intro to a guest ever. Your former company Gawker was put into bankruptcy in large part due to Peter Thiel. But then I've talked to you, I was like, I kind of think he has some Thielite sympathies at times, which is a weird thing to say. But I'm like, oh, I'm sort of picking up on some of that. But I don't know if I'm wrong. Are you like quietly based? How would you describe yourself?