Alpha Exchange

Utilizing a framework built over two decades, Alex Kazan is keenly attuned to today’s complex world of geopolitical risks and the implications for markets. Argentina’s sovereign default episode two decades ago demonstrated the importance of institutional credibility with respect to managing through an economic and currency crisis. Years later, the Great Financial Crisis would further inform Alex o...

A native Australian, Christian Hauff capitalized on the financial crisis to co-found Quantitative Brokers with Robert Almgren in 2009. After working together on the development of agency algorithmic technology in equities and equity options, Christian and Rob saw an opportunity to apply some of that IP to the world of fixed income, where no such solutions existed at the time. Christian describes t...

Hitting the Street in the bear market days of the late 70’s, Michael Aronstein became quickly engaged in studying the Fed, interest rates and inflation. His perspective, enabled by managing capital through high and low inflation and volatility regimes, reminds us of the old adage “there are no bad securities, only bad prices”. A value-oriented investor with a taste for being contrarian, Michael’s...

In the market for global equity volatility, few investors have the magnitude of experience of David Rogers. Starting at Goldman Sachs in 1982, Dave was evaluating option strategies in the nascent period of the US derivatives market. His experience through the ’87 crash as well as his time in Asia in the early 1990’s, were formative in establishing a risk management philosophy that has proven criti...

Today’s guest on the Alpha Exchange is Tim Duy, the Professor of Practice in the department of economics at the University of Oregon. After earning a PhD in economics there, Tim worked at the United States Treasury and later with the G7 Group, a political and economic consultancy where he focused on monitoring the Fed for clients and market participants. Tim returned to the University of Oregon in...

A gunner’s mate in the Navy and a graduate of Indiana University, Jim Grant ventured to the financial desk at the Baltimore Sun in the early 1970’s. He joined Barron’s in 1975 before launching his firm in 1983. For more than 3 decades, Grant’s Interest Rate observer has twice monthly landed on the desk top of its readers, providing analysis that is deeply insightful, often skeptical and written in...

Beginning his career in Chicago trading corn futures in the late 1980’s, Eric Peters moved into the sharp elbowed world of bond futures trading on the CBOT and then went to a bank, prop trading rates and derivatives through the 1990’s. His perspectives on the exchange rate mechanism crisis in 1992 and the bond market massacre in 1994 provide significant insight on the way in which policy framework...

In a matter of hours in 1999, Harry Markopolos determined that Bernard Madoff’s returns were not real. Over the course of the next 9 years, Harry and his team assembled a trove of compelling evidence supporting this claim. He spoke to investors and market participants, studied the web of feeder funds that raised capital and built option pricing models that cast doubt that Madoff could achieve anyt...

Armed with a Ph. D. in Theoretical Physics, Vineer brings a deep understanding of financial mathematics to developing trading strategies in the derivatives market. At the same time, he’s learned real lessons over the years about the inherent uncertainties in markets – the surprise Fed tightening in 1994, and the LTCM meltdown in 1998 were formative experiences for Vineer that now guide a risk phil...

Distressed investing is about more than identifying undervalued securities that emerge when the default probability for a company rises. For Arthur Kaz, that’s just step one. Using valuable experience gained at a bankruptcy consulting firm, Kaz came to the hedge fund industry with a deep understanding of how to guide a company through the operational and financial challenges that result from defau...

On behalf of his investors, Chris has developed systematic and quantitative strategies that trade volatility. His long convexity approach enabled his investors to thrive through the 2008 Great Financial Crisis. And through his deep dive research publications, Chris has made a real contribution to the industry’s understanding of volatility. Chris was among the small number of investors that saw the...

The Alpha Exchange is a podcast series launched by Dean Curnutt to explore topics in financial markets, risk management and capital allocation in the alternatives industry. Our in-depth discussions with highly established industry professionals seek to uncover the nuanced and complex interactions between economic, monetary, financial, regulatory and geopolitical sources of risk. We aim to learn fr...