Alpha Exchange

Over her 22 years at Citi Group, Anna Raytcheva managed complex trading risks through volatility regimes both high and low. The Orange County blowup on the back of Greenspan’s surprise tightening campaign in 1994 provided Anna with an early lesson on the vulnerabilities that arise from owning exotic securities, especially when they are positioned with leverage. My conversation with Anna considers...

Armed with a PhD in astrophysics, Josh Younger hit Wall Street in 2010 as the embers of the Global Financial Crisis were slowly burning out. With a decade of focus on modeling interest rate derivatives and with the perspective gathered through unique fixed income risk events, Josh brings exceptional insights to our discussion. Our conversation aims to uncover the factors that contributed to the ne...

For Jordi Visser, market crisis events inevitably result in regime shifts.  The pandemic of 2020 – a shock to the economy, deterioration in asset prices and an overwhelming response from the government and Central Bank – is no exception.  In his role as Chief Investment Officer at Weiss Multi Strategy Advisers, Jordi is dispassionate in his assessment of risk and reward, relying on hard data rathe...

When it comes to obvious asset class similarities, crypto and crude might seem to have little in common.  But for Rich Rosenblum, there are linkages between them upon closer inspection.  Seeing similarities in the diversifying characteristics of both assets in broad portfolios, Rich also notes the tendency for digital assets and crude to experience phases of investment and then value extraction fr...

In the words of former FOMC Governor, Kevin Warsh, “If you’ve seen one financial crisis, you’ve seen one financial crisis”.  The uniqueness of shocks makes this so and the result is that policymakers need to constantly innovate in their response to episodes of heightened uncertainty. Now a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institute, Kevin shares with me his perspective on the pandemic of 2020, evalu...

Widely considered one of the most gifted central bankers of the modern era, Raghuram Rajan is a highly prominent voice on monetary policy and the global macro economy and it was my distinct privilege to bring his insights to the Alpha Exchange.  Now the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Professor of Finance at Chicago Booth, Dr. Rajan was head of the Reserve Bank of India from 2013-2016, stewar...

From Latin America in the 80’s to South East Asia in the 90’s, the history of emerging market dust ups is rich. And for Jay Pelosky, the co-founder and CIO of TPW Investment Management, these episodes of instability provided critical early training on the “never say never” world of EM. On this episode of the Alpha Exchange, Jay recounts his days at Morgan Stanley, trained under Barton Biggs, and r...

Michael Pettis is no stranger to episodes of financial crisis.  Trading through multiple Latin American debt crises in the 1980’s, the Southeast Asia currency debacle in 1997 and, in its aftermath, the capital flight that engulfed Brazil, Michael has developed a rigorous framework for the how and why of these disruption events.  Central to his approach is Hyman Minsky’s focus on the balance sheet...

Trading through big FX macro events in the 1990’s, Mike Novogratz is no stranger to market instability and the Central Bank response that is ultimately required to restore order. Our conversation is a retrospective on the long ago period when firmly positive interest rates were a thing and when market prices were discovered through supply and demand. In Mike's rendering, today's world looks a lot...

Within financial markets, derivatives have always been the stomping grounds of those inclined to entertain probabilities and models.  Delving further within this space, you will find simpler vanilla products like listed options but also a realm of considerably greater complexity where counterparties engage in the transfer of alternative risk exposures.  For French banks like BNP, derivatives innov...

As our crisis series of the Alpha Exchange continues, I was pleased to have the opportunity to engage with Jens Nordvig, the founder and CEO of Exante Data.  After stints at both Goldman Sachs and Nomura, Jens launched his independent firm in 2016 with an eye towards using a highly data driven approach to help institutional clients make sense of global economic developments and position portfolios...

The explosion in market volatility that resulted from the Covid crisis was all-consuming in March.  Massive one-day moves in broad equity indices, correlations that approached 100% and a breathtaking crash in the price of oil were factors that left investors unable to consider much more than the wreckage in front of them.  But for Jake Doft, the founder and CIO of Highline Capital, the crisis has...

As our crisis series within the Alpha Exchange continues, it was a pleasure to catch up with Steven Englander, the head of G10 FX and North America Macro Strategy for Standard Chartered.  We review the fast moving aspect of the March dislocation and the manner in which pricing relationships typical of normal markets ceased to hold.  As many of our listeners are steeped in equity volatility, it was...

As the economic collapse associated with the pandemic enters its second month, it was my distinct pleasure to have Howard Marks, the founder of Oaktree Capital, on the Alpha Exchange. A highly successful investor across many decades, Howard has prudently managed risk through a vast number of market cycles. His assessment of the complex mix of economic, financial and monetary aspects of the coronav...

As markets continue to grapple with the vast uncertainty resulting from the corona virus, it was excellent to have Peter van Dooijeweert, the Head of Institutional Hedging and Portfolio Solutions at Man Group, as a guest on the Alpha Exchange.  Our “crisis series” is aimed at uncovering the unique elements of the 2020 vol event, the extent to which systematic strategies acted as amplifiers on the...

On this special crisis series episode of the Alpha Exchange, I had the opportunity to solicit the insights of Chris Cole, the founder and CIO of Artemis Capital.  Through a framework that gives much weight to the impact of financial products and the risk-taking built around them, Chris has a unique understanding of both low and high periods of volatility and the linkages between them.  In a paper...

As the special Crisis Series within the Alpha Exchange continues, it was a pleasure to catch up with former colleague, George Goncalves.  A 20 year veteran on both the buy-side and sell-side, George most recently led the Fixed Income Strategy effort at Nomura Securities. Our discussion considers the post GFC regulatory landscape that emerged in the US Treasury market and how, over time, the Street...

Our crisis series within the Alpha Exchange podcast continues and it was my pleasure to solicit the insights of Eric Peters, the founder and CIO of One River Asset Management.  To be sure, this isn’t Eric’s first experience managing capital through a crisis, but in his words, “this is a unique one…amplified by a whole range of things including big flows into vol selling programs.”  Seven percent r...

Welcome to the second episode in our special Alpha Exchange series focused specifically on the 2020 economic and financial crisis.  It was my pleasure to have Vineer Bhansali, the founder and CIO of Long Tail Alpha, back on the podcast and hear his framing of the conditions that gave rise to so substantial an asset price sell-off in so short a period of time.  Calling the markets the most illiquid...

Welcome to the first in a special series of the Alpha Exchange in which the 2020 economic and financial crisis is the specific focus.  Amidst this protracted dislocation in markets, I am pleased to have Benn Eifert, the founder and CIO of QVR Advisors, share his views on the factors at work within the equity derivatives market and the important drivers of option prices.  Benn’s insights on positio...

The price of vol, in single stocks, in equity sectors and across asset classes is on the mind of Stuart Kaiser. Now the head of equity derivatives research at UBS, Stuart spends his time helping the firm’s institutional clients find value on both the long and short side of the derivatives market. Landing at Goldman Sachs a stone's throw away from the global financial crisis, Stuart developed his s...

When it comes to equity derivatives, few individuals have traded more options than John Succo.  Across a career in markets spanning more than 3 decades, John has managed convexity risk on both the sell-side and buy-side, through high and low vol periods and across single stock and index options.  During the course of our discussion, John shares many rich stories.  He brings to life the early days...

Managing portfolios over the course of two decades, Mike Green has developed a unique framework for assessing risk and opportunity.  Trained in his early days to perform equity valuation, Mike came on the scene just as the tech bubble was imploding and the massive discrepancy between growth and value was coming undone.  In a great seat to ride the small cap value wave during the post internet bubb...

The son of a physician and with a penchant for math, Andy Redleaf came upon options in high school, even before they were listed on the CBOE.  Post college, Andy landed in an option trading role and was making markets on the CBOE during the 1987 stock market crash. In his rendering, the introduction of stock index futures dramatically increased correlation among stocks and the creation of portfoli...

In 1998, Scott Ladner hit the derivatives scene at First Union, just as LTCM was imploding and equity volatility was rocketing higher.  No sooner would the Fed help contain that risk episode, then the tech bubble would be set in motion.  An intense period of “stocks up, vol up”  during which valuations expanded to unheard of levels, followed by an equally intense, “stocks down, vol up” characteriz...