Market theses under pressure.
Excess Returns treats markets as systems of incentives, flows, narratives, and fragile assumptions. Its conversations move from headlines like oil shocks, AI spending, inflation, and war into what investors may be mispricing.
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Excess Returns is an investing and markets show built for people who like their macro arguments tested in public. The format is mostly interview-driven, with finance guests working through live uncertainty rather than delivering a polished lecture. It moves quickly. A typical conversation begins with a market stress point, then asks who is exposed, what is already priced, and what would have to change for the thesis to break. Recent episodes circle around U.S. stock valuations, productivity, consumer spending, savings rates, inflation, war, oil, dollar positioning, AI capital spending, and options-market flows. The show is especially interested in the gap between headline strength and underlying weakness. One discussion with David Rosenberg focuses on why he owns almost no U.S. stocks and how disposable income, employment composition, and the savings rate complicate the growth story. Another with Liz Ann Sonders looks at the way indexes can hide bear-market behavior beneath the surface. Brent Donnelly brings a positioning lens to the dollar, arguing that risk-off markets do not always move the same way because investors enter each shock with different trades already on. Jim Grant gives the show a more historical and philosophical register, especially around inflation, war, and crowded beliefs. The AI episodes are not simple hype checks. They focus on capital intensity, durability of revenue, and where visibility gets worse down the spending chain. Excess Returns also uses network formats like The OPEX Effect, The Jim Paulsen Show, and Last Call to bring in narrower lenses on flows, confidence, oil shocks, employment data, and narrative change. That can make the feed feel like a market desk with several recurring conversations rather than one tidy program. The strength is specificity. Numbers, analogies, and historical comparisons are used to make a claim more accountable. The style can be blunt, but it is not built on outrage. It suits investors who want to understand why a market can stay resilient while many of its inputs look strained.
Made for: Best for long-term investors, market professionals, and finance-curious listeners comfortable with macro, valuation, flows, and portfolio risk. It suits people who want more than headline reaction but less than academic abstraction.
What sets it apart: Excess Returns stands out by translating big market arguments into the actual mechanisms investors can debate: positioning, savings behavior, capital spending, volatility, confidence, and incentives. Guests are allowed to range widely, then the discussion pulls their views back toward practical consequences.
Excess Returns is dedicated to making you a better long-term investor and making complex investing topics understandable. Join Jack Forehand, Justin Carbonneau and Matt Zeigler as they sit down with some of the most interesting names in finance to discuss topics like macroeconomics, value investing, factor investing, and more. Subscribe to learn along with us.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Excess Returns makes market behavior legible by testing headlines against positioning, business economics and longer investment horizons.
Excess Returns keeps asking what sits beneath a market move. Jack Forehand, Justin Carbonneau and Matt Zeigler use guest conversations to connect options activity, investor positioning, consumer confidence and corporate investment with the behavior of stocks, currencies and the…
A war hits, the dollar rises, and your neat market rule goes back to the drawing board.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A skeptical macro episode weighing market confidence against income, productivity, and the savings rate.
David Rosenberg opens with a sharp risk test: investors should be paid for taking equity risk, not paying for it. From there, the conversation ties that idea to his wider view that the stock market has become a force shaping the economy itself.
A crisp case for reading currency moves through positioning, not safe-haven rules.
The episode treats market reactions to war and other shocks as a function of what investors already own, not as a simple safe-haven script. Its clearest example is the dollar. In 2008, a huge carry trade helped push the currency sharply higher as positions unwound.
A bear-market discussion that tests reassuring market data against household pressure.
Excess Returns frames a market question around timing: what changes when an inflection point arrives before the headline numbers admit it? Matt Ziegler and Jack Forehand speak with Lizanne, Chief Investment Strategist at Schwab Center for Financial Research, about the distance…
A quality investor tests AI optimism against spending chains, revenue durability, and the time it takes investment to pay off.
Excess Returns looks at the AI boom through the harder lens of quality investing: how durable growth really is when revenue at one layer depends on spending from the layer above it.
A low-confidence backdrop becomes a practical look at how market gloom can coincide with the start of a new bull phase.
The episode treats weak consumer mood as more than a gloomy headline. It asks whether low confidence can show up near the beginning of a bull market, then uses Jim Paulson's Walmart indicator as the opening clue.
A grounded explanation of how options positioning can shape stocks in ways long-term investors still need to understand.
Options flows become the working map here for market moves that long-term investors may feel even if they never trade options. Brent Kachuba, founder of SpotGamma, explains the mechanics behind those flows, from the counterintuitive idea that puts do not have to rise after a…
A sharp long-horizon pass through AI, wars, and the business changes Wall Street may miss.
Harris Kupperman argues for stretching an investor's time horizon beyond Wall Street's 30-, 60-, and 120-day contest. His inflection-point lens is simple but useful: look for what has changed dynamically inside a business, then judge whether the market has noticed.
Brent Kochuba of SpotGamma analyzes how surging options volumes are driving market movements.
Harris 'Kuppy' Kupperman of Praetorian Capital explains his 'inflection investing' strategy on Excess Returns.
A roundtable discussion with long-term investors on the dangers of safe stocks, AI uncertainty, and the casino-like nature of modern markets.
Jared Dillian discusses how markets fail to price geopolitical risks and regime change, and the Fed's dilemma with oil at $100.
Paul Eitelman discusses the shift from economic headwinds to tailwinds, predicting U.S.
Market professionals discuss lessons from the last 15 years and challenge traditional portfolio theories.
David Rosenberg starts with price.
The dollar resists the neat label.
Liz Ann Sonders says the U.S.
Jim Grant discusses the inflationary effects of war and the dangers of consensus thinking in markets.
Brent Kuchuba discusses how options market flows and volatility are driving the market amid geopolitical shocks and social media noise.
GMO's Tom Hancock, head of focused equity, joins the Excess Returns podcast to discuss his paper 'Hype Versus High Conviction' and his four-layer AI investment framework spanning applications, hyperscalers, LLMs, and infrastructure.
Economist Jim Paulsen joins the Excess Returns podcast to walk through a suite of proprietary indicators suggesting that despite the Walmart recession signal hitting 2008 levels, the bull market is more likely transforming than ending.
A new podcast, Last Call, launches with a discussion on the Iran crisis and oil shock through unique perspectives from experts on macro impact, narrative, flows, and employment data.