Colin Lancaster, Global Head of Macro, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors

Now the Global Head of Macro at Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Colin Lancaster has always found top-down investing a fascinating discipline. Trained as a lawyer but finding his way to the buy-side in the 1990’s, Colin has spent the last 25 years in markets, allocating capital and building teams focused on macro. Over his long career, he’s traded through his share of vol events, each a challenging experience but also formative from a risk philosophy standpoint. Our conversation is a retrospective on the nature of risks that investors are forced to confront, how discontinuities in asset prices materialize and that ever elusive search for the positive carry hedge. Exploring seismic episodes of risk-off, we also spend time on the need to anticipate the inevitable and typically overwhelming response from the Central Bank and how, post both the GFC and now Pandemic, the Fed’s interventions have increasingly crowded out the integrity of market price signals. Lastly, we spend time on Colin’s fast paced and insightful book, “FED UP!”, a project he undertook in 2020. In it, Colin brings to life the frenetic, all-consuming world of global macro investing in which an unwelcome portfolio move is always a bad tweet away and decisions must be made quickly and based on a vastly incomplete information set. Weaved into “FED UP!” is a statement of concern about the widening gap of wealth inequality in the US. In a world in which asset prices are increasingly the outcome of Central Banks who mean well but whose actions vastly benefit some versus others, a certain rethink may be in order. I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Colin Lancaster.

Om Podcasten

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.