As founder and CIO of QVR Advisors, Benn Eifert spends his time looking for opportunities in volatility markets and helping his investors protect capital through periods of uncertainty. With the surge in volatility that has recently materialized in GameStop and a number of other stocks with high short interest, it was timely to have Benn back on the Alpha Exchange to share his always excellent insights on option market dynamics. Our discussion considers the emergence of a factor that may have be...
Feb 01, 2021•41 min•Ep. 58
We take things in a different direction on this episode of the Alpha Exchange and focus on the importance of leadership and culture at large financial institutions. With this in mind, it was my pleasure to solicit the insights of Mark Miller, a personal mentor of mine and a capital markets professional whose sell-side career has spanned 4 decades. Having served in the role of global head of sales at Citigroup, BofA and HSBC, Mark has led significant teams of professionals across product areas an...
Feb 01, 2021•52 min•Ep. 57
Mentored at Legg Mason under the tutelage of legendary investor Bill Miller, Samantha McLemore is a student of finding value in corporate equities. Now the founder and managing member of Patient Capital Management, Samantha shares her perspectives developed over two decades and through several cycles of the value factor. Our conversation is an exploration of Samantha’s framework, keenly focused on finding opportunity based on valuation and with a long horizon in mind. In Samantha’s world, embrac...
Jan 05, 2021•52 min•Ep. 56
Working as an architect in the 1990’s, Tania Reif saw first hand the devastating impact on local communities of the currency crisis events that occurred with some frequency in her home country of Venezuela. Gripped by the field of macroeconomics, Tania ultimately earned a PhD in economics from Columbia University, writing her dissertation on currency crises. Our conversation brings to life Tania’s framework for the “why” of FX crisis events. In this context, she shares her assessment of the mult...
Dec 22, 2020•48 min•Ep. 55
Gordy Lawrence, Director of Global Derivatives at Wellington Management, spends his days searching for value in optionality. With a framework geared toward assessing option prices on both an absolute and relative basis, Gordy and his team support portfolio managers throughout the organization with the aim of utilizing derivatives to improve the up versus down capture profiles in portfolios. My conversation with Gordy explores this process – how proxy hedges are evaluated based on historical perf...
Dec 18, 2020•53 min•Ep. 54
Over more than two decades in markets, John-Mark Piampiano has traded his share of volatility. Managing derivative portfolios over the years from both the long side and the short side of the carry ledger and across the spectrum of listed and OTC products, John-Mark is a keen observer of change in market structure, trading technology and the provision of liquidity. Our discussion considers the manner in which price discovery in equity option markets has evolved, now well represented on the screen...
Dec 09, 2020•50 min•Ep. 53
Cutting his teeth on the acclaimed mortgage trading desk at Salomon Brothers in the 90’s, Troy Dixon gained an early appreciation for the speed and degree to which market liquidity can turn. Now the CIO of Hollis Park Partners, a firm he founded in 2013, Troy shares the perspectives gathered in managing complex trading risk over more than two decades in markets. We talk about his time at Deutsche Bank, where he ran the RMBS trading unit, and the intense pressure to compete in the pre-crisis peri...
Nov 21, 2020•46 min•Ep. 52
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 this and other prominent periods of market disruption and what they taught her about the limitations...
Nov 17, 2020•50 min•Ep. 51
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 near collapse of the Treasury Market during the chaos that ensued in March of 2020. Characterizing US ...
Nov 15, 2020•58 min•Ep. 50
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 rather than the common narratives often proffered. In today’s set of market prices and data, Jordi sees opp...
Oct 07, 2020•49 min•Ep. 49
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 from that investment. The net result is volatility. On this episode of the Alpha Exchange, it was a plea...
Oct 02, 2020•48 min•Ep. 48
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, evaluating the mix of forces that brought the VIX to a new time high even as the Treasury market nearly im...
Sep 24, 2020•43 min•Ep. 47
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, stewarding the country’s economy and financial system through a precarious time punctuated by a violent cur...
Aug 26, 2020•42 min•Ep. 46
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 responsible for allocating capital across asset classes and countries. We reminisce on the Internet b...
Aug 21, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 45
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 and the relationship between assets and liabilities both for individual entities and across the system...
Aug 08, 2020•53 min•Ep. 44
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 different. Central Banks have taken an increasingly activist role in guiding interest rate markets a...
Jul 24, 2020•41 min•Ep. 43
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 innovation has always been an important part of the value proposition. And as Head of Sales for the America...
Jul 23, 2020•45 min•Ep. 42
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 accordingly. Our discussion focuses broadly on the notion of nonlinearity as it applies to asset mar...
Jun 22, 2020•37 min•Ep. 41
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 provided a truly unique opportunity to step back and contemplate change and the investable implication...
May 27, 2020•42 min•Ep. 40
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 great to solicit Steven’s views on risk as expressed through FX. His team’s work on the relative perf...
May 22, 2020•39 min•Ep. 39
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 coronavirus crisis provides context for factors at work in market prices. A buyer of quickly cheapening ass...
May 11, 2020•31 min•Ep. 38
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 way down and the lessons learned from being long or short optionality. Addressing these questions, Pe...
Apr 23, 2020•36 min•Ep. 37
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 authored in October 2017, Chris stated, "The markets are not correctly assessing the probability that ...
Apr 09, 2020•33 min•Ep. 36
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’s capacity to bear risk was compromised even as the government’s appetite to run larger deficits gre...
Apr 06, 2020•30 min•Ep. 35
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 return hurdles for pension plans, very low rates and the longest continuous economic expansion on recor...
Apr 01, 2020•27 min•Ep. 34
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 he has experienced in his thirty year career, Vineer cites the “sand pile effect” in describing the d...
Mar 31, 2020•33 min•Ep. 33
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 positioning in both vanilla and complex OTC products, his knowledge of the landscape of risk transfer trades ...
Mar 30, 2020•26 min•Ep. 32
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 skill set by looking for opportunities in the single stock options market at a time of massive transi...
Feb 20, 2020•54 min•Ep. 31
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 of career – one in which option pricing inefficiencies were significant across both strike and time. He...
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 30
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 bubble, but pre-crisis period, Mike began to appreciate the force of market prices and their impact on beh...
Jan 27, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 29
