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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

00:52:02

Wayne Dahl, Co-Portfolio Manager, Oaktree Capital...

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/04/07

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,

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01:02:30

Alpha Exchange 250th Episode: A Retrospective

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/04/02

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.

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00:51:59

The Shock Heard ‘Round the World: US Government Bonds

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/03/31

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 the

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00:52:59

Kris Abdelmessih, Co-Founder, Moontower.ai

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/03/13

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

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00:44:57

Zach Buchwald, Chairman and CEO, Russell Investments

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/03/09

As Chairman and CEO, Zach Buchwald leads Russell Investments, a firm overseeing $370bln in client assets and celebrating its 90th anniversary in providing portfolio management services to institutions and individuals.Zach details the open-architecture model utilized at Russell, explaining how portfolios are constructed by combining best-of-breed managers and strategies across asset classes. He shares how these portfolios are managed through an outsourced chief investment officer framework,

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00:51:53

Alberto Gallo, Founder and Chief Investment Officer,...

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/03/04

Amidst these very uncertain times in the economy, geopolitics, and asset prices, it was excellent to welcome Alberto Gallo, founder and CIO of Andromeda Capital Management, back to the Alpha Exchange. Our conversation first considers the long arc of post-crisis monetary policy. Here, Alberto argues that extended quantitative easing, while stabilizing in the short run, carried structural side effects over time—capital misallocation, corporate consolidation, and widening inequality. He notes that

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00:48:50

Michael Contopoulos, Deputy Chief Investment Officer,...

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/02/19

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

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00:51:58

Louis Vincent Gave, Founding Partner & Chief...

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/02/04

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

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00:49:49

Libby Cantrill, Head of Public Policy, PIMCO

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/01/30

It is busy time, to say the least, for Libby Cantrill, Head of Public Policy at PIMCO. Today’s markets are grappling with vast uncertainties…in US fiscal policy, in Fed independence and leadership, in geopolitics, and in global trade. Libby is charged with helping both the clients and risk-takers of PIMCO better understand the implications of policy that is changing rapidly.Through her conversations with institutional, retail, and international clients, she outlines how uncertainty around US policy

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00:22:39

GME 5 Years Later…Lessons and Threats

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/01/27

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 collectively

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00:50:21

Alex Urdea, Founder and CIO, Deep Ocean Partners

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/01/26

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

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00:57:13

Andrew Lapthorne, Global Head of Quantitative...

Alpha Exchange ·

2026/01/15

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 distributions

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00:32:35

Closing Thoughts on 2025

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/12/31

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

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00:55:12

Ian Harnett, Co-Founder and Chief Investment...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/12/19

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

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00:52:07

Kumaran Vijayakumar, Co-Founder and CEO, DataDock...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/12/16

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

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00:55:04

Mark Rosenberg, Founder and Co-Head, Geoquant

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/12/12

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,

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00:43:56

Todd Rapp, CEO, Fortress Multi-Manager Group

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/12/09

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 through

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00:53:19

Jessica Stauth, CIO, Systematic Equity, Fidelity...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/12/02

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 uncertainty

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00:21:03

Price is the Only Fundamental

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/11/25

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 make

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00:44:18

Megan Miller, Senior Portfolio Manager and Head of...

Alpha Exchange ·

2025/11/21

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 volatility

en

252 results

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