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PODCAST

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,

business investing

All Episodes

00:50:44

Benn Eifert, Founder and CIO, QVR Advisors

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/06/30

The clearing price of optionality in the market is impacted by a myriad of factors. To be sure, the economy and corporate profit cycle, the stance of monetary policy and geopolitical risk all matter. Flows in the derivatives markets are also of consequence as they impact the environment for supply and demand. And in this context, it was excellent to welcome Benn Eifert, Founder and Managing Partner of QVR Advisors, back to the Alpha Exchange.Benn brings a data-driven lens to today’s complex

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01:00:46

John Marshall, Head of Derivatives Research, Goldman...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/06/17

It was a pleasure to welcome John Marshall, Head of Derivatives Research at Goldman Sachs, to the Alpha Exchange. Our conversation explores a number of critical topics starting with the meaningful growth of equity funds deploying options as part of a risk management overlay. John describes how covered call ETFs and systematic vol-selling funds have quietly reshaped the supply/demand dynamics for index optionality. He makes the point that this cohort—unlevered, yield-focused, and largely

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00:21:05

Sayings on Vol and Risk...A Fresh 10

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/06/14

Greetings and salutations loyal listeners, welcome to what promises to be another exciting addition to our Sayings on Vol and Risk. To set the table, last year, I did a 5-part series with 25 Sayings. These are concise statements I’ve wound up using many times over during the course of my career to help myself and others think about market risk. These pitchy proverbs are market maxims that explore the drivers of unanticipated change in asset prices. With the first 25 saying completed in 2024, I

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01:05:06

Dan Villalon, Global Co-Head of Portfolio Solutions,...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/06/13

Today’s world of ETFs and mutual funds increasingly features new flavors, a popular one of which is derived from embedding optionality. There are plenty of ways in which one might contemplate risk managing and shaping the distribution of equity returns using options. Common strategies like overwriting create income, but limit upside. Others like the zero cost collars create both upside and downside guardrails on returns. These strategies can be back-tested. Because they also exist in the market,

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00:54:10

Mitchell Garfin, Co-Head of Leveraged Finance, BlackRock

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/06/05

Dean sent a separate email but for the sake of visibility I am replying on this thread with the opener text and the audio file. If we could get this ready for publishing would be great.With nearly three decades at BlackRock, Mitch Garfin brings a deep well of experience to his role as Co-head of Leveraged Finance, overseeing high yield and leveraged loan strategies for the firm. In this episode, we explore the evolution of the credit landscape — from structural shifts in the high-yield market that

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00:19:10

Sayings on Vol and Risk...A Fresh Five

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/06/04

In 2024, I did a 5-part podcast series called “25 Sayings on Vol and Risk”. These are observations I’ve found do a nice job of describing how markets work, or perhaps better said, how markets sometimes fail to work. Because markets are always teaching us lessons, I couldn’t help but add to the original 25 with five new sayings. I’ll follow up in short order with another five.Here are our Sayings 26-30: “Financial market objects at rest tend to stay at rest.” “Realized vol rules the world.” “My

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00:53:59

Benjamin Bowler, Managing Director and Global Head of...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/05/20

As Global Head of Equity Derivatives Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Ben Bowler is helping the firm’s institutional client base understand the complex risk dynamics that impose themselves on today’s markets. His process often leads him across asset classes, looking for linkages and developing stress indices that may provide early warning signs for US equity markets.Our discussion first considers the recent SPX vol event, which, from a short-term severity standpoint, Ben puts in a category

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01:00:07

Corey Hoffstein, CIO, Newfound Research

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/04/30

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 their innovative approach to return stacking, Corey and team are making alternative sources of risk premium accessible and packaged in an ETF format.Through our conversation, we first

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00:31:56

The VIXgilantes Strike Back

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/04/28

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 aftermath of recent chaos is an overhang of uncertainty that may hamper critical decision-making. I see plenty of lingering uncertainties - from the uneven communication from the WH,

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00:56:09

Matt King, Founder, Satori Insights

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/04/25

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 decade it's been sovereigns and QE. Now the founder of Satori Insights, Matt shared his current assessment of risk on this episode of the Alpha Exchange. His materially bearish take is

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00:52:26

Steve Englander, Head of G10 FX and North America...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/04/23

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 imposition of substantial tariffs by the US on its trading partners. With this in mind, it was great to welcome Steven Englander, Global Head of G10 FX Research of Standard and

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00:24:09

The Vol Shock Heard 'Round the World

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/04/07

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 probabilities become more live when a shock of this magnitude occurs. From a market standpoint, however, the higher vol goes, the greater likelihood that government officials blink in some

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00:36:39

Campbel Harvey, Professor of Finance, Fuqua School of...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/03/31

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 at Research Affiliates, on his recent work on gold, an asset near and dear to me. We discuss his piece “Is There Still a Golden Dilemma?", with Claude Erb that updates work they did

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00:27:23

GeoVolitics and Gold

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/03/24

In this discussion, I review the absolutely stunning level of volatility experienced by the S&P 500 right around this time 5 years ago, as the market crash resulting from the Covid shutdowns occurred. No asset – except volatility – can survive the liquidation that took place in March of 2020. I also focus on gold, which, to be clear and to repeat, is not a hedge. A hedge is an insurance contract that you must part money with in order to obtain. There are no positive carry hedges in the world. But

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00:54:50

Owen Lamont, Senior Vice President, Acadian Asset...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/03/11

Now a Portfolio Manager at Acadian Asset Management, Owen Lamont has had a long career in both the markets and in academic research on them. Earning a PhD in Economics from MIT in the 1990’s and then teaching at the University of Chicago shortly thereafter, Owen makes the point that these two storied institutions approach empirical finance from vastly different perspectives, with the MIT approach to explaining market anomalies utilizing behavioral finance and Chicago embracing market efficiency. Our

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00:47:54

Roxton McNeal, QIS Lead Portfolio Manager, Simplify...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/03/04

“This is not your father’s ETF market” would be one statement used to highlight the ever-expanding product mix available to investors via exchange traded funds. Today’s suite of ETFs embeds derivatives, targets non-traditional assets like private credit and crypto and can offer daily resetting leverage as well. Add to this, efforts to deliver exposures to quantitative investment strategies via the ETF wrapper. With this in mind, it was a pleasure to welcome Roxton McNeal, lead portfolio manager of

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00:15:09

GeoVolitics, Implied Correlation and Option Pricing

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/03/03

My process is about seeking out some alpha through analyzing a broad spectrum of prices, specifically the one’s that imply some probability. I will repeat that it is the options market, not the stock market that is the best economist in the world. Option contracts carry the dimensions of time – the expiration – and distance – the strike price and the resulting prices help us gauge two important questions for investors, “when and by how much?”.So, in no particular order, a few things on my mind that

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00:21:11

Is There a Plumbing Problem in Equity Correlation?

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/02/10

Recently, DeepSeek, tariffs and earnings news have caused large moves in some stocks but not others, leaving fluctuations at the equity index level relatively tame. Will this volatility moderating run of low correlation continue? In this short podcast, I explore the recent history of extraordinary diversification in the US equity market along with the implications that may result. Is the market vulnerable to recency bias and assuming that ultra-low correlation is here to stay? Further, how should

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00:46:09

Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst, Bloomberg...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/01/30

It is said that death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. Add to these, the enormous growth of the ETF industry as a third irrefutable occurrence. Covering the landscape of exchange traded funds for Bloomberg is Eric Balchunas, a man steeped in the most plain vanilla of products like the SPY to the newest flavors of underlying exposures and payout constructions which he calls “hot sauce”. Our conversation starts with an overview of the massive ETF haul in 2024 and we learn that inflows

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00:47:40

Anniversary Episode: Reflections on the Podcast

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/01/23

Since 2018, Dean Curnutt has been hosting discussions with market professionals, focused on topics such as portfolio construction, hedging, monetary policy and the impact of financial products on markets. Central to these conversations has been the exploration of an expert’s risk framework and how he or she goes about looking for opportunities. A little more than 6 years after its launch, the Alpha Exchange is celebrating its 200th episode. Along the way, Dean has been privileged to engage with

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240 results

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