Money Stuff: The Podcast
Episode: No Nap Rooms: Credit, Peace, 24X
Date: October 17, 2025
Hosts: Matt Levine (Bloomberg Opinion), Katie Greifeld (Bloomberg News & TV)
Overview
This episode dives into the latest drama and trends in the world of finance, focusing on "late cycle accidents" in credit markets (with a surprising cockroach metaphor), the spectacle of prediction markets (featuring a potential Nobel Peace Prize insider trade), and the advent of (almost) 24-hour stock trading. Matt and Katie mix technical finance insights with trademark deadpan wit, discussing everything from private credit blame games to the human rhythms of stock exchange hours.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
1. Cockroaches & Credit Accidents: The State of Private Credit
[03:54–08:20]
- The episode launches from recent headlines about cockroaches—a metaphor from Jamie Dimon (JP Morgan) about unseen contagions and risks in finance.
- Jamie Dimon: "When you see one cockroach, there are probably more." [04:14]
- Recent credit market "accidents" (notably first brands and Tricolor) are discussed, and the semantic dispute over whether these blowups fall in the "public" or "private" credit bucket.
- Matt: "It is the case that these accidents ... are true bubbly signs. You don't make loans to people who are double or triple or 100 times pledging their assets...unless you're really trying hard to make loans." [06:39]
- Discussion of incentives to keep making loans late in the cycle:
- Matt quotes Chuck Prince (ex-Citigroup CEO, 2007): "As long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. That's what it is, man." [08:21]
- Katie: "We all know we're coming to the end of the song." [08:32]
- The flavor of the week: a blame game between banks and private credit funds as to who is responsible for risky lending.
- Katie: "It's this fun blame game that has played out this week. I feel like we wouldn't be talking about it so much had Jamie Dimon not said 'cockroaches'." [06:11]
Insight:
The private credit market's boom is creating incentives for lenders to keep the "music playing," even as structures become riskier and market insiders warn of late-cycle instability.
2. Private Credit vs. Banks: Who’s Got the Risk?
[08:45–11:40]
- Matt and Katie dissect nuances between private credit and bank lending:
- Private credit is funded by long-term equity capital, making it arguably more stable than banks' deposit-funded models.
- However, the frothy fundraising environment for private credit is leading to loosening of standards.
- "On the other hand, banks are regulated... it's such a good fundraising environment for private credit firms... you do have some pressures to put all this gusher of money to work and that might loosen your underwriting standards as well." —Matt [10:34]
- There’s debate over whether we should care if the recent blow-ups are private or public. The real concern is the overall lending standards in an overheated market.
Notable Quote:
- Katie (on Jamie Dimon’s cockroach metaphor): "My first reaction was like an antenna... like that on a cockroach." [11:47]
3. Prediction Markets & (Non-)Insider Trading: The Nobel Peace Prize Bet
[14:28–22:14]
- The hosts pivot to a story about the Nobel Peace Prize and a $50,000 gain by a Polymarket user who bet on the winner just ahead of the official announcement, raising concerns about insider trading.
- "There were some suggestions that it was insider trading because it was done—the announcement, in the hours leading up to the announcement." —Matt [15:18]
- Turns out, it may have just been someone smart enough to spot the winner from prematurely uploaded website assets.
- Discussion of the information value of such markets versus actual economic purpose.
- "Two, is knowing it 12 hours early that useful? ... You haven't made anyone more informed about anything in any useful way. It's just ... you get some money." —Matt [19:36]
Insight:
Prediction markets incentivize information-gathering, but sometimes that information is only useful for arbitrage, not for broader economic efficiency. Markets for economically trivial events (like early knowledge of a Nobel winner) may not scale to the grade of hedging substantial risks.
4. (Almost) 24-Hour Stock Trading — The 24X Exchange
[26:11–34:24]
- 24X National Exchange is aiming for 24/5 stock trading, but at present offers 18-hour sessions, working towards more.
- Katie: "I feel like their name should be 23X." [26:42]
- Matt: "If you say 23, feel like what? ... That's why it's funny." [26:44]
- Discussion on who benefits from 24/5 trading (international investors, insomniacs, or drunken retail traders).
- Matt: "I want to hire people who wake up early on Sunday morning and log in to poker sites to pick off the drunks coming home in another time zone." [28:06]
- Structural implications: Most professional and index activity concentrates at the open and close; after-hours trading increases volatility and bad pricing.
- Matt: "If you have more 24-hour trading, you're just going to have more trading where no professionals are awake and things trading at wrong prices, and people want to trade at wrong prices." [31:16]
- Reflection on the "rhythm" of the market and humanity: Will trading ever really be continuous, like Amazon or crypto?
- "There is a human rhythm and there is a computer rhythm ... Stock market is from a time of you show up there and you leave to go have dinner." —Matt [34:09]
- Katie: "It goes against just the rhythm of being a human." [33:35]
5. Finance Never Gets Boring
[34:24–35:55]
- Matt reflects on how the financial world is still full of silliness and inefficiency—perhaps preventing the market from becoming “dull, efficient and automated” as once forecast.
- Katie: "We all get tired of the silliness in the headlines, but I think that the world that you described sounds a lot more tiresome." [34:47]
- Matt: "All this dumb stuff... at least I have something to write about." [35:16]
Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes
- Matt on keeping up with the news cycle: "Isn't that exciting? ... what if something crazy happens and you get out of here at 2:59 and you go on air and they're like, something crazy, crazy happening?" [02:04]
- Katie on trading hours: “Maybe you're in Japan, maybe you're just up at three in the morning.” [27:23]
- On afterhours trading risk: "Every ugly chart means someone made a very bad trade, and someone else made a very good trade." —Matt [31:34]
- On the persistence of markets’ human quirks: "You can buy on Amazon anytime you want... But the stock market is from a time of you show up there and you leave to go have dinner." —Matt [33:49]
Timestamps for Key Segments
| Topic | Start | |--------------------------------------------------|-----------| | Banter & Nap Rooms | 01:54 | | Cockroaches/Private Credit Metaphor | 03:54 | | Private Credit vs. Bank Lending | 08:45 | | Nobel Peace Prize/Prediction Markets | 14:28 | | 24X Exchange & 24-Hour Trading | 26:11 | | Markets’ Rhythm & Human Factors | 33:29 | | Reflections on Market Silliness | 34:24 |
Tone and Language
Conversational, witty, and lightly irreverent—typical of Matt Levine’s Money Stuff column. The hosts play off each other with banter while distilling technical themes in a way that’s inviting to seasoned Wall Streeters and interested outsiders alike.
Summary
This episode captures the tension in modern finance: a world lurching between endless innovation (and risk—“cockroaches” in the system), the inescapable human quirks that shape markets (late-night trading, meme stocks), and an ongoing (often hilarious) quest to make sense of it all. There are no easy answers, but there’s plenty to talk (and laugh) about.