Alpha Exchange
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.
Show episodes
Corey Hoffstein, the Co-Founder and CIO of Newfound Research is among the investors expanding the financial product set available to the RIA community. A client segment that has long been fed a diet of 60/40 exposures, the high-net-worth community is finding the need to diversify beyond stock and bond exposure. Using t
In six short trading days from 4/2 to 4/9, the SPX realized as much vol as it did during the ENTIRE year of 2024. The protracted risk-off that began with the “Liberation Day” fallout ranks only behind Covid and the GFC in terms of severity using data going back to 1990. While we've likely moved past peak VIX, in the af
For Matt King, evaluating market risk is often about pinpointing vulnerabilities within the financial system. Over the many years he's been advising institutional investors, he's gone where the action is - in the dotcom era it was corporate balance sheets, in the pre-GFC period it was asset-backed CP and in the last de
Steve Englander, Head of G10 FX and North America Macro Strategy, Standard Chartered
Market risk events come in all shapes and sizes, originating from unique sources of uncertainty. We've seen them all - valuation bubble unwinds, mortgage credit crashes, Fed policy shocks, even the shutdown of the US economy from Covid. Over the last month, investors have been forced to confront a new risk, that of the
Lenin purportedly said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” It’s difficult to understate how highly consequential these past few days have been. We live in an interconnected world of international rivalries, debt, trade, asset prices and economies. All kinds of tail prob
Best known for his seminal work on the information content of the US Treasury yield curve nearly 4 decades ago, Campbell Harvey has produced meaningful academic research in all corners of empirical finance. In this episode of the Alpha Exchange, I caught up with Campbell, now a Professor of Finance at Duke and Partner
