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 from the perspective our guests can bring with respect to the history of financial and business cycles, promoting a better understanding among listeners as to how prior periods provide important context to present day dynamics. The “price of risk” is an important topic. Here we engage experts in their assessment of risk premium levels in the context of uncertainty. Is the level of compensation attractive? Because Central Banks have played so important a role in markets post crisis, our discussions sometimes aim to better understand the evolution of monetary policy and the degree to which the real and financial economy will be impacted. An especially important area of focus is on derivative products and how they interact with risk taking and carry dynamics. Our conversations seek to enlighten listeners, for example, as to the factors that promoted the February melt-down of the VIX complex. We do NOT ask our guests for their political opinions. We seek a better understanding of the market impact of regulatory change, election outcomes and events of geopolitical consequence. Our discussions cover markets from a macro perspective with an assessment of risk and opportunity across asset classes. Within equity markets, we may explore the relative attractiveness of sectors but will NOT discuss single stocks.
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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 volatility supply and the structural forces that generate it. Here, David discusses the growth of struc...
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 counterparties with differentiated strengths rather than broad-based coverage across every product area....
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 scale has increasingly become a competitive advantage. We explore how firms differentiate themselves thr...
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 reflects on how periods of market stress, from the post-dot-com bear market to the GFC, have shaped...
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 Global Financial Crisis. That experience informs a broader perspective on how market infrastructure evolve...
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 volatility. He discusses how investors often ignore protection in calm periods, only to rush toward hedges a...
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—demographics, globalization, and technology—rather than relying solely on cyclical data and economic mo...
It was a pleasure to welcome Wayne Dahl, Co-Portfolio Manager of Global Credit Strategy at Oaktree Capital Management, to the Alpa Exchange. We begin with Wayne’s path through convertible arbitrage, structured credit, and multi-asset investing, and how that foundation informs a framework centered on understanding sensitivities across rates, credit, and equity exposures. Convertible arbitrage, in particular, serves as an entry point into managing multiple dimensions of risk simultaneously, reinfo...
Welcome to Episode 250 of the Alpha Exchange. To celebrate the milestone, I asked my dear friend, Jon Kalikow, to host the conversation, switching seats and having me as the guest. I launched the podcast in 2018 with a simple idea: to create space for long-form conversations that explore how market practitioners think about risk. Rather than focusing on predictions, the goal has always been to understand frameworks—how investors process information, respond to uncertainty, evolve through cycles....
The “risk-free” rate figures prominently in how we’ve all been taught the foundations of finance. To price a security, start with the asset that is the safest and soundest and then add compensation for bearing uncertainty. It has always been self-evident that the global risk-free benchmark was the Treasury market. Deep, liquid and viewed as default free, US government bonds have been the recipient of capital during times of stress. And the reason is that the US has long been viewed as not just t...
Kris Abdelmessih, author of the MoonTower Substack and founder of the options analytics firm MoonTower.ai., has spent years thinking about option pricing, volatility regimes, and the mental math traders use to translate volatility into price. In this context, it was great to welcome him back to the Alpha Exchange to explore his thought process. We begin with developments in commodity markets, particularly crude oil, and silver, where geopolitical tension and speculative flows have led to sharp c...
Zach Buchwald, Chairman and CEO of Russell Investments, outlines the firm's open-architecture model and outsourced CIO framework, which helps institutions and individuals build diversified portfolios using best-of-breed managers. A core focus is addressing the looming retirement crisis, detailing the structural and behavioral challenges of the 401(k) era versus defined benefit pensions. He stresses the importance of compounding, staying invested through volatility, and advocating for initiatives like "baby bonds" to foster early financial literacy and access to markets.
Alberto Gallo delves into the structural consequences of prolonged quantitative easing, including capital misallocation and widening inequality, and criticizes central banks for undermining their independence. He meticulously dissects the rapid growth and inherent flaws in private credit, highlighting its illiquidity and mispriced risks, especially in a concentrated tech sector. Furthermore, Gallo explores the profound, dual implications of AI-driven capital expenditure on market outcomes, advocating for investment in hard assets over paper assets amidst a changing fiscal and geopolitical landscape, particularly concerning Western debt.
With early exposure to Paul Tudor Jones and then stints on the sell-side in credit research, Michael Contopoulos is now Deputy CIO of Richard Bernstein Advisors, a macro-oriented asset manager overseeing roughly $20 billion across long-only portfolios. Our discussion centers on portfolio construction in an era of extreme equity concentration and shifting global leadership. On the equity side, the firm is under-weight the most concentrated segments of U.S. equities and overweight international ma...
It was a pleasure to welcome Louis Gave, the Founding Partner and CEO of Gavekal, back to the Alpha Exchange. Our discussion centers on what he describes as one of the most consequential and underappreciated macro developments today: the mispricing—and now the policy shift—of the Chinese renminbi. Louis is quite bullish on China. Louis argues that for much of the past decade, China has acted as a powerful deflationary force on the global economy. In response to US trade restrictions, Chinese pol...
PIMCO's Libby Cantrill unpacks the complex policy landscape driving investor behavior in 2026, highlighting major uncertainties in US fiscal policy, Federal Reserve independence, geopolitics, and global trade. The discussion covers the implications of policy volatility, President Trump's tariff strategies and their market impact, and the long-term challenges of US entitlements. Cantrill also provides PIMCO's investment outlook, emphasizing steeper yield curves and the need for diversification amidst growing domestic political risks and the emerging politics of AI.
Five years ago, on January 27th, 2021, the frenzied buying and speculation in Gamestop hit its apex. In this short podcast, I look back on one of the more fascinating, and dare I say, dangerous, risk events in modern day markets. The stock was subject to an outright speculative attack. But not the kind most CEOs complain about. This was not Soros taking down the British pound in 1992. This was a retail army of Reddit bandits whose buying power was nothing individually, but everything collectivel...
It was a pleasure to welcome Alex Urdea, Founder and CIO of Deep Ocean Partners to the Alpha Exchange. Alex traces his career from credit derivatives trading at a large bank to a risk management function at a hedge fund focused on distressed investing to ultimately building an asset-backed private credit platform focused on smaller, less trafficked segments of the lending universe. The conversation centers on how regulatory changes following the Global Financial Crisis, prolonged periods of low ...
Today’s market landscape is defined by extremes that challenge conventional portfolio construction. A small group of mega-cap stocks now represents an unprecedented share of index weight, profit generation, and capital spending, raising important questions about valuation, diversification, and risk concentration. With this in mind, it was great to have Andrew Lapthorne, Global Head of Quantitative Research at Société Générale, back on the Alpha Exchange. Drawing on long-run valuation distributio...
As I share my closing thoughts on 2025, I want to look back with an eye towards pointing out this year’s unique characteristics from a market risk perspective. I start this exercise by highlighting what I consider to be 2025’s three most interesting days from a vol and risk perspective: 1) the April 7th roller-coaster in the VIX 2) the September 10th surge in ORCL and 3) the October 21st melt-down in the GLD. Each of these helps us better understand some of the forces at work in today’s market. ...
It was a pleasure to welcome Ian Harnett, co-founder and Chief Investment Strategist at Absolute Strategy Research, to the Alpha Exchange. Our discussion explores how long periods of low volatility and abundant liquidity can quietly allow systemic risks to accumulate outside the traditional banking system. Drawing on lessons from the Global Financial Crisis, Ian explains why today’s financial system—now dominated by non-banks rather than banks—requires a different risk framework. While post-GFC ...
Kumaran Vijayakumar has spent his career in the equity derivatives market, first as an exotics trader and later in running large risk-taking desks in listed and OTC options. Now, the CEO of DataDock Solutions, a firm he Co-Founded in 2018, Kumaran and his team are developing analytical tools that allow sell-side flow desks to better understand the risks they take and clients they take it for. Our discussion explores the challenges inherent in evaluating client flow, and how data-centric infrastr...
Risk generally falls into 4 categories, monetary (Central Banks), economic (growth and profits), financial (leverage, carry and correlation) and finally, geopolitical. This last category is non-market, market risk. And in this context, it was a pleasure to welcome Mark Rosenberg, Founder of GeoQuant and adjunct professor at UC Berkeley to the Alpha Exchange for a discussion centered on political risk as a measurable market variable. Mark’s work evaluates how governance, social instability, insti...
Todd Rapp got his career started in equity options at Goldman Sachs in the late 1990’s, a wild time in which a bubble inflated and burst and provided critical lessons in both gamma and vega risk in the process. Now the CEO of the Fortress Multi-Manager Group, Todd leans heavily on his derivatives DNA in the areas of sourcing uncorrelated return streams, portfolio construction and both measuring and managing risk. Early training has shaped his long-term view that markets express probability throu...
It was a pleasure to welcome Jessica Stauth, CIO for Systematic Equities at Fidelity Investments, to the Alpha Exchange. Our discussion explores how quant investing has evolved through cycles of market stress, technological change, and today’s extraordinary concentration in the equity landscape. Reflecting on her start in markets in the aftermath of the 2007 Quant Quake and the onset of the global financial crisis, Jessica highlights the foundational lesson that markets contain far more uncertai...
They say there’s always a bull market somewhere and a chart on doom commentary has surely been up and to the right. Perhaps it’s been the joint decline in the equity and crypto markets. NVDA is down 10% in November and Bitcoin is down almost twice that. Perhaps it’s been that there wasn’t a hard and fast enough of a catalyst to point to…no trade war, Powell presser, CPI surprise or earnings shortfall. These would have at least left us with plausible drivers, satisfying our need for markets to ma...
Welcome back to the Alpha Exchange. In today’s episode, I am joined by Megan Miller, Senior Portfolio Manager and Head of the Options Solutions team at Allspring Global Investments. Her career spans the extremes of market volatility—from learning options trading during the GFC to now overseeing option-based strategies across a $600 billion platform. The conversation centers on how her team uses a GARCH-like modeling framework as part of a systematic approach to forecast future realized volatilit...
On this episode of the Alpha Exchange, I’m pleased to welcome back Jordi Visser, CEO of Visser Labs and Head of AI Macro Research at 22V. Our conversation centers on one of the most consequential themes in markets today: the intersection of artificial intelligence, exponential innovation, and market structure. With Nvidia’s historic rise as a backdrop and AI’s increasing integration into every sector, Jordi pushes back on the tendency to label this cycle a “bubble,” arguing that AI is more akin ...
The global economic and geopolitical order has long been balanced by the United States. Today, however, that traditional stabilizing role is in flux. The drivers of market uncertainty, typically resulting from changes in monetary policy and the economy, are increasingly linked to US politics. Fiscal strain, tariffs, and hyper-partisanship are sources of unpredictability reverberating across markets worldwide. In this context, it was a pleasure to welcome Alex Kazan, Partner and Co-head of the Ge...
Loyal listeners, I hope your recent days have gone well, even if they are becoming shorter. On my mind – and where I hope to engage your interest for 20 odd minutes – is the topic of risk and uncertainty. The SPX is at an all time high and it is also highly concentrated with volatile and richly valued but uncorrelated tech behemoths. That’s very unique. Whether you are an AI bull or bear, one thing we must acknowledge is the unique degree of index concentration and the risks that accompany it. T...
