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S2E7 The Rail Revolution: George Stephenson and the Birth of Railways (Part 1)
Every so often a technology arrives that changes everything. For over 5,000 years, the fastest a human being or a ton of freight could move overland was the speed of a horse. Then, in the span of a…
S2E6 The 80s on Wall Street: Howard Marks and Bruce Karsh Cultivate Cycles (Part 5)
The final chapter in our 80s on Wall Street series bridges the story from the rise of high yield bonds and leveraged buyouts to the birth of modern distressed debt investing. At the center of it are…
S2E5 Bob McNally on Oil Price Volatility, OPEC, Energy Markets, and the Strait of Hormuz
Oil is one of the most important commodities in the world. Despite that, it’s probably one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated markets even by sophisticated market participants. Especially…
S2E4 The 80s on Wall Street: Fred Carr Bankrolls the Boom (Part 4)
In the first three parts of this series, we covered Michael Milken building the high-yield bond market, Ross Johnson triggering the RJR Nabisco bidding war, and KKR winning the biggest LBO in…
S2E3 The 80s on Wall Street: KKR and The RJR Nabisco Battle (Part 3)
We pick up where we left off in Part 2. Ross Johnson, CEO of RJR Nabisco, presents a management buyout bid for $75-per-share—a number he’s certain will get the deal done without competition.Instead,…
S2E2 The 80s on Wall Street: Road to RJR Nabisco’s LBO (Part 2)
In 1987, America is riding one of the greatest bull markets in history—until it all comes to an abrupt end on Black Monday, October 19th 1987. Portfolio insurance, a fragile strategy built on…
S2E1 The 80s on Wall Street: Michael Milken Makes a Market (Part 1)
The 1980s were an iconic decade on Wall Street. Michael Milken and his team at Drexel were key players in sparking the wave of buyouts that were emblematic of the era.Before all that, in the early…
S1E12 The Shale Revolution: EOG, OPEC, and Profits from Shale Oil (Part 3)
In Part 1, George Mitchell unlocked shale gas. In Part 2, Aubrey McClendon fueled the boom with a capital and land machine at Chesapeake. In Part 3, we tell the story of one of the operators who…
S1E11 The Shale Revolution: Aubrey McClendon & the Natural Gas Boom (Part 2)
At the end of Part 1, Devon had just bought Mitchell Energy for $3.5B and locked in the technological innovation behind the shale revolution. But the real boom in drilling, debt, and production…
S1E10 The Shale Revolution: George Mitchell’s Natural Gas Moonshot (Part 1)
George Mitchell and his team—people like Nick Steinsberger—through relentless experimentation and financial pressure targeted natural gas in the Barnett Shale and unlocked generations of US energy…
S1E9 The Dot Com Boom: Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk Walk into the Fire and Create PayPal (Part 4)
Imagine starting a company to change the world of finance right before an epic stock market crash.Elon Musk famously said that PayPal wasn’t a hard company to create. It was a hard company to keep…
S1E8 The Dot Com Boom: Bezos Sees the Wave, Rides the Crest, Survives the Crash (Part 3)
Technology waves are easy to see in hindsight, but often hard to see before they arrive. It’s even harder to build enough conviction to take a risk, ride the wave, and build something great.Jeff…
S1E7 The Dot Com Boom: A Tale of Two Telecoms (Part 2)
In the late 1990s, the internet grew exponentially to become an enormous engine for technological progress and economic disruption.The existing telecommunications infrastructure was designed to carry…
S1E6 The Dot Com Boom: Netscape Lights the Fuse (Part 1)
DescriptionGold-rush energy meets browser wars.In mid-1994 Silicon Graphics legend Jim Clark sits down with a 22-year-old programmer Marc Andreessen in the heart of Silicon Valley. Clark, a…
S1E5 The Nixon Shock: Connally’s Bold Move (Part 3)
A run on the dollar, stagflation, and an election on the line—Part 3 wraps up the series with President Nixon’s shocking announcement to shut the gold window… a move that changed the monetary system…
S1E4 The Nixon Shock: Martin’s Fed vs. The World (Part 2)
On the journey towards President Nixon’s fateful decision on August 15th, 1971 to suspend dollar-gold convertibility—a decision that would forever change the global economy—we meet William McChesney…
S1E3 The Nixon Shock: The Golden Rule at Bretton Woods (Part 1)
Gold, power, war, and spies—this series has it all. On August 15th 1971, President Nixon announced that he was suspending the dollar’s convertibility into gold. This announcement upended the Bretton…
S1E2 PILOT - The Global Financial Crisis: The Banking Crisis (Part 2)
In Part 2: The Banking Crisis, we pick up where Part 1: The Housing Bubble leaves off—with financial institutions all over the world holding mortgage-backed securities as housing prices start to…
S1E1 PILOT - The Global Financial Crisis: The Housing Bubble (Part 1)
In this episode, we tell the story of the modern mortgage market, how Wall Street financialized it, and how easy credit inflated one of the biggest bubbles in American history. A bubble that, when it…
S1 ARCHIVE: Backtest Pilot—The Dot-Com Bubble (see new dot-com series starting with Episode 6: Netscape Lights the Fuse)
Quick heads-up: this was our very first episode. We’ve gotten much better since publishing this. If you’re new or looking for the best way to learn about the Dot-Com market cycle, start with The Dot…
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Backtest has published 20 episodes since March 2025, covering topics in Business, History.
Backtest is currently highly active with new episodes monthly. Average episode length is 1h 4m.
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