Episode summary
Book of Souls | Money Stuff: The Podcast
Money Stuff The Podcast
· · Hosts: Matt Levine, Katie Greifeld
Summary
The episode starts with basketball and then turns to a few finance themes: SpaceX as a joke valuation puzzle, Ken Griffin’s New Yorker profile, Bridgewater’s shrinking ambitions, and the SEC’s trade-through rule. The hosts spend the most time on what Griffin’s career suggests about Citadel: not a classic stock-picking shop, but a business built around repeatable market services, higher quality of earnings, and recurring revenue from liquidity provision, market making, and arbitrage.
They also contrast that model with Bridgewater’s evolution. Near Barda is trying to make Bridgewater smaller, more focused, and more performance-driven, which may improve returns but also reduces the steady fee base that made the firm attractive to outside investors in the first place. The hosts frame that as a tradeoff between pure investing and business quality, and note that employees may prefer the prestige and upside of stronger returns even if investors liked the old scale.
The final segment argues that reg NMS and the trade-through rule have entrenched too many exchanges and made market structure harder to change. The hosts say removing those rules could simplify equity trading and also make tokenized stocks and crypto-style exchange models easier to build.
Key takeaways
- Ken Griffin is portrayed as someone building a repeatable financial business, not a Buffett-style capital allocator, with a focus on market making and other fee-like services.
- Bridgewater’s shift under Near Barda may improve performance, but it also reduces the stable management-fee profile that outside investors liked.
- The hosts argue that Bridgewater’s old scale was a better business for fee stability than for maximizing returns.
- Reg NMS is presented as a rule that may have encouraged too many stock exchanges and unnecessary routing complexity.
- Removing the trade-through rule could make tokenized stocks and crypto exchange models easier to implement, according to the hosts and market-structure advocates.
Notable quotes
“if you think about hedge funds generating alpha, there are alphas that are just repeatable forever because you're providing a service”
“Someone kept a book of souls about all their friends who got fired”
“if I start a stock exchange every high frequency trader, every broker has to connect to my stock exchange”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. — It was a painful game. I don't know if I enjoyed watching it. It was really stressful. — Had the experience the entire game of being like, "Well, obviously the Knicks are going to win this."
Yeah, I felt that way too. — I said jokingly, but not. I was like, "Well, we have them right where they want them. Knicks were down like 15 or whatever." I knew that they were going to win in my long tenure of watching basketball for two weeks because that's how they start every game. But I was watching with my dad who was having a heart attack like the entire time. So
He was not as confident. — But I was also so tired. — Yeah. — I'm not a not cut out for late night sports, which is why I love the World Cup. — Yeah. — Because — I actually I prefer the World Cup in other parts of the world. I'm not going to any games and I'd rather it be in like Asia and have games on at like 8:00 in the morning New York time cuz like then I can watch the games, you know?
I think you're you're a rare bird. — No, but like there are games in this World Cup that are at like 9:00 p.m. — It's too late. It's too late. — They start at midnight. I'm like I'm never going to watch it.
I just don't know if I have the emotional energy to like get invested in another sport that I so casually follow. You know, — I feel like the World Cup is extremely great for not getting very invested. — Yeah. — You can watch two countries you've never thought about play each other and it's just fun.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- aliens and capital markets
- quality of earnings
- hedge fund heroes
- market structure
- tokenization
Companies and tickers mentioned
- SpaceX
Watch the episode
Watch “Book of Souls | Money Stuff: The Podcast” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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Money Stuff The Podcast, this episode and its artwork belong to Bloomberg. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
