Alpha Exchange

My guest today on the Alpha Exchange is Bruce Darringer, Founder of BSD Strategic Advisors and former Partner and Chief Operating Officer of King Street Capital Management.   Our conversation is about risk management, but not simply the risk of prices moving against you. As Bruce makes clear, an investment firm is a complex institution, and market stress has a way of exposing weaknesses every...

On this episode of the Alpha Exchange, I’m joined by Lori Calvasina, Head of U.S. Equity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, for a discussion on the forces shaping the equity market and the framework she uses to assess where the S&P 500 should trade.   A central theme of our conversation is the strength of corporate earnings. Lori contrasts today’s market with 2022, when the rapid repricing...

Private equity has become an increasingly important part of institutional portfolios. Investors are attracted to its long-term return potential, the ability to influence portfolio companies and, perhaps less explicitly, the relatively smooth performance that comes from periodic rather than daily valuations. But what exactly are investors being compensated for? And how much of private equity's retu...

Chris Hentemann launched 400 Capital Management in October of 2008, in the teeth of the Global Financial Crisis, with roughly $2.5 million of friends, family and mostly his own capital. Today, 400 Capital manages approximately $8 billion, focused on asset-based and securitized credit.   We begin with Chris’s early career at First Boston, Salomon Brothers and Bank of America, where he develope...

My guest today on the Alpha Exchange is the Convexity Maven, Harley Bassman. Harley joins me at a particularly interesting moment for markets, with long-end Treasury yields backing up, rate volatility elevated and the traditional relationship between stocks and bonds looking increasingly unsettled.   We begin with Harley’s argument that the rise in long-term yields is less an inflation story...

With one of the largest repricings in fixed income in decades underway, Brij joins me for a wide-ranging conversation on monetary policy, inflation, the wealth effect and where he sees opportunity across global bond markets. We begin with a provocative question: what if interest rates have become more effective at influencing financial markets than the real economy? Here, Brij argues that the trad...

It was a pleasure to welcome Amanda Lynam, Chief Credit Strategist in Global Investment Research at Goldman Sachs, back to the podcast. Nearly three years after our first conversation, much has changed!  With the extraordinary capital expenditure cycle underway in artificial intelligence, there is no shortage of questions about how the corporate credit market will finance it and what the grow...

Kimberly Gallant, the Global Head of QIS Structuring at CIBC, has spent nearly two decades working across quantitative investment strategies, derivatives and structuring. Our conversation is a deep dive into the evolution of QIS and the economic rationale behind these increasingly important systematic investment strategies.   We begin by exploring the origins of QIS and how ideas from academi...

In this discussion, I make the case for tail hedging. I communicate two main ideas. First, I lay out the concept of the “fourth type of risk off”, an episode that features instability in the back end of the US bond market. As I’ve said, nothing can really work in markets if the Treasury market does not. Count me as worried that the US fiscal issues are incredibly difficult to solve – we wouldn’t b...

I really enjoyed hosting this Alpha Exchange discussion with Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, CIO for the Americas and Global Head of Equities at UBS Global Wealth Management. Ulrike has had a long career in markets, having spent nearly 25 years at Tudor Investment Corporation working across quantitative macro and global tactical asset allocation before joining UBS. We begin with Ulrike’s academic backg...

The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report is a twice yearly, must read. Leading the excellent research done here is Tobias Adrian, Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department at the IMF. It was a pleasure to welcome Tobias to the podcast to explore the IMF’s financial stability framework, vulnerabilities in global markets, and the evolving risks shaping the f...

It was a pleasure to welcome Jon Havice, Founder and CIO of DGV Solutions, back to the Alpha Exchange. Our conversation explores systematic investing, volatility risk premia, and portfolio construction for institutional investors.   We begin with Jon's path from trading currency options and derivatives at O'Connor and UBS through hedge fund management and investment consulting before founding DGV...

It's been a busy year for the Alpha Exchange podcast — 25 episodes so far and an exciting fall schedule ahead. Today I'm going solo, assessing a backdrop for market risk that has proven quite unique this year. In the discussion that follows, I want to share what's on my mind with respect to the prices we all stare at every day, and tie together three crosscurrents that look separate on the surface...

It was a pleasure to welcome Alec Litowitz, the Founder of Magnetar Capital and QStar Capital, to the Alpha Exchange. Central to our discussion is an exploration of the ideas in Alec’s new book,  The Adaptability Quotient . Here, he draws on more than thirty years of investing across multiple market regimes. We begin with Alec’s three decades in financial markets, from his early years at Citadel t...

It was a pleasure to host an Alpha Exchange discussion with Franklin Parlamis, the Founder and CIO of Aequim Alternative Investments. Franklin brings a distinctive perspective shaped by two decades in capital structure and convertible bond arbitrage. His career spans the Russian debt restructuring of 1998—where he witnessed firsthand how broken correlations can unwind hedges—through the convertibl...

It was a pleasure to welcome David Silber, Head of Institutional Equity Derivatives at Citadel Securities, to the Alpha Exchange to discuss the evolution of listed options markets, institutional liquidity, and the technology reshaping modern derivatives trading. We begin with Dave’s early career on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange during the transition to multi-listed options, where...

What causes significant risk-off events? Can they be anticipated to any degree? Understanding the how and why of these episodes is critical for investors seeking to avoid drawdowns. In this short podcast, I share how I think about episodes of risk-off, with particular attention to the interaction between stock and bond prices — before, during, and after market vol events. I outline three type of r...

Aaron Brown is a Wall Street quant, risk manager, and trader. He’s also a professor and the author of the recent book Wrong Number —on probability, reasoning, and the role of skepticism in markets and beyond.   We begin with Aaron’s unconventional path into finance, from identifying betting opportunities in horse racing and playing professional poker to studying under pioneers including Fischer Bl...

David Dredge, Founder and CIO of Convex Strategies, has spent his career in derivatives markets, on the long side of optionality and seeking value in convexity. It was great to learn more about the role he plays in fortifying client portfolios with insurance and to have him reflect on how periods of market stress expose limitations in traditional risk methodologies. Our conversation focuses on vol...

It was a pleasure to host a discussion with Samir Patel, Global Head of Global Market Sales at Nomura Securities International, on leadership, client strategy, and the evolution of institutional markets businesses in an environment defined by constant change.   The conversation emphasizes how institutional client relationships have evolved over time. Samir explains why clients increasingly seek co...

It was a pleasure to welcome Colin Lancaster, Global Co-Head of Discretionary Macro and Fixed Income at Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, back to the Alpha Exchange. Our discussion focuses on the evolution of the multi-manager model, portfolio construction, and the challenges of navigating today’s macro environment.   Colin discusses the importance of systems, data, and risk infrastructure, and why sc...

It was a pleasure to host a discussion with Ronnie Wexler, Global Head of Equities Distribution at Barclays, and solicit his insights on change – in markets, in client relationships and in the growing role of technology across the financial ecosystem. We begin with Ronnie’s early years at Goldman Sachs during the final stages of the technology bubble and the sharp market reversal that followed. He...

I was excited to host this conversation with Rob Flatley, Founder and CEO of TS Imagine, on prediction markets, AI-driven workflows, and the structural changes reshaping financial market infrastructure.   We begin with Rob’s path from software engineering into capital markets, including leadership roles at Bank of America and Deutsche Bank during the rise of electronic trading and through the Glob...

It was a pleasure to host a conversation with Hari Krishnan, Head of Volatility Strategies at SCT Capital, on the changing nature of volatility markets, portfolio hedging, and why commodities may offer increasingly valuable diversification in today’s environment. Hari reflects on his book Second Leg Down , which explores practical approaches to tail-risk hedging and the cyclical nature of volatili...

It was a pleasure to welcome Rob Kaplan, Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs, and former President of the Dallas Fed, to the Alpha Exchange.   We begin with Rob’s reflections on his time at the helm of the Dallas Fed from 2015 to 2021, a period spanning rate liftoff, fiscal stimulus, and the COVID crisis. He outlines how his perspective as a business practitioner led him to focus on structural forces—d...