Between 2010 and 2020, a period many hedge funds call the ‘Alpha Winter,’ the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England made only 22 quarter-point-equivalent interest rate moves. Fixed income and macro traders had little…

Robert Koenigsberger isn’t rattled by uncertainty, at least when it comes to markets. That may be simply part of his natural constitution. He started his career in the 1980s when emerging markets were essentially a collection of bank loans in default…

Robert Koenigsberger isn’t rattled by uncertainty, at least when it comes to markets. He’s had a lot of practice, starting his career in the 1980s when emerging markets were essentially a collection of bank loans in default. He founded Gramercy, the emerging markets alternatives firm, in 1998 when Russia devalued its currency and forced the restructuring of the country’s debt.

Long before BlackRock became the world's largest asset manager, its founders were building the tools they needed to understand risk in their own portfolios, often starting from something as modest as a spreadsheet. As the firm grew, that technology…

Few people have shaped modern finance as profoundly as Lew Ranieri. Starting in the mailroom at Salomon Brothers, he rose to lead the firm's mortgage trading operation in the late 1970s and 1980s, where he helped pioneer the mortgage-backed security,…

Few people have shaped modern finance as profoundly as Lew Ranieri. Starting in the mailroom at Salomon Brothers, he rose to lead the firm's mortgage trading operation in the late 1970s and 1980s, where he helped pioneer the mortgage-backed security,…

Long before he founded Starboard Value and became one of the most formidable activist investors on Wall Street, Jeff Smith got a phone call that sent his career in an unexpected direction: an offer to help run a fresh-squeezed orange juice company.…

For most investors, risk is measured in basis points and drawdowns. For Mark Mobius, it often meant something far more personal. Over a career spent pioneering emerging markets investing, Mobius traveled relentlessly to countries most investors never…

On Saturday, October 6, 1979, Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker called a rare weekend press conference and announced a dramatic shift in how the Fed would fight runaway inflation. The move, later nicknamed the "Saturday Night Special," sent…

In 2016, Google DeepMind's AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, one of the world's top players of Go, an ancient board game long considered too complex and intuitive for computers to master. For many in finance, the moment raised an unsettling question: if…

When Glenn Hutchins co-founded Silver Lake in 1999, the dot-com boom was at its peak and the money was chasing flashy startups. Silver Lake took a different path, building the first large-scale private equity firm dedicated to technology by focusing…

In 2014, Starboard Value set its sights on Darden Restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster. When Darden pushed ahead with the sale of Red Lobster despite shareholder calls to discuss it first, Jeff Smith and Starboard…

When Cliff Asness walked away from Goldman Sachs to co-found AQR Capital Management, he gave up a partnership at one of Wall Street's most prestigious firms, just before it went public. AQR launched its first fund in August 1998, straight into the…

Private equity is often portrayed as polished boardrooms and carefully modeled spreadsheets. The reality can be far messier, with deals won and lost in late-night negotiations when the stakes are highest and everyone is running on adrenaline. Glenn…

In the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, a small group of investors saw what most of Wall Street missed: the U.S. housing market was built on a foundation of risky mortgages that was bound to crack. Those who bet against it, John Paulson…

In recent weeks, investors have gotten rattled by a potential slowdown in corporate spending on AI, but that is unlikely to put much of a dent in the boom in AI capital spending. The race is on.