Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin

Barry speaks with Matt Cherwin, Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Marek Capital, an alternative asset management firm launched in 2024. He is responsible for the firm’s investment strategy, portfolio construction, research and risk management. Previously, he spent 16-years at JPMorgan Chase & Co where he held titles of Chief Investment Officer, Group Treasurer, Co-Head of Global Spread Markets, Global Head of Securitized Products, and Global Head of Asset-Backed Trading. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:17Speaker 02

  This is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on Bloomberg Radio.

• 1:24Barry Ritholtz?

  This week on the podcast, another extra special guest, Matt Sherwin is co-founder and chief investment officer at Merrick Capital. He previously spent 16 years at JP Morgan Chase and then a bunch of years at Citigroup beforehand, running all sorts of spread markets, head of securitized product, lots of CIO and risk management titles. I came to know Merrick through a live event we did at Bloomberg last year. I found that his approach to credit and trading is absolutely fascinating and what Merrick is doing is really quite interesting. I thought the conversation was brilliant and I think you will also. With no further ado, my conversation with Merrick Capital's Matt Sherwin.

• 2:21Barry Ritholtz?

  Matt Cherwin, welcome to Bloomberg.

• 2:23Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me. This is exciting. That was a bigger wind up than I was

• 2:27Barry Ritholtz?

  I like a

• 2:28Speaker 04

  expecting.

• 2:29Barry Ritholtz?

  I like a big wind up because it gives us an opportunity to roll back to the beginning and say, all right, bachelor's in economics from University of Pennsylvania. What was the original career plan? I don't imagine people going to college and saying, I want to be the head of global spread markets.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  No, but that's super interesting because our oldest is a sophomore in college now. And he's in the business school at American and I was just talking to him yesterday and he said, I'm now in, I think they call it like finance for business. I really like this new class. And I said to him, that reminds me so well of when I was in undergrad business school and I did the first couple of semesters of econ and I hated it.

• 3:11Barry Ritholtz?

  I had a similar experience with economics.

• 3:13Speaker 04

  And it was like, you know, I shouldn't have hated as much as I did, but at the time, it was ISLM curves, it was supply, it was demand, et cetera. And it just, it didn't feel very practical to me and I didn't do very well in there. I didn't go to class very often. I didn't do very well. But then we got to kind of the next semester, which I think they call finance 101 and was like, bond math, discounted cash flows. And I was like, oh, this I like. Okay, I am in the right place.

• 3:42Barry Ritholtz?

  Well, it's much more realistic and you're not dealing with homo economicus. That is this theoretical version of humans.

• 3:49Speaker 04

  Although, you know, looking back on, I wish I had listened a bit more at some of those others. But, you know, something I say, maybe we'll get to is like, it just, a recommendation I would give to other people, it took me a little while to realize what I was interested in, what I was interested in being interested in. And when I got into some of those classes, kind of the more finance-y kind of stuff, I was like, this I like. This makes sense. I want to learn more. And I think that's kind of where it's always wanted to go. I just like when there's, you know, numbers on the page, it adds up to something, you're trying to make money, it's hopefully positive at the end. It might be negative. It's pretty clear cut. Um, at least the goal is, and I always like that, I always gravitate.

• 4:29Barry Ritholtz?

  So, so economics way too abstract and academic, but business and finance, practical, applicable, real life usage.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is interesting too, because I also, I'm a little bit like, uh, this a little exaggerated, but I'm a little bit of like a history buff. So like, it was interesting that, that what didn't, didn't appeal to me because I do like kind of the history of it. How did we get here? And I think that's always something that I'm like in this forum as well. Going back to learn more about financial systems, how money works, how they thought it used to work, different schools of thoughts. And I think it really helps you understand where you've been, where you are, where you're going.

• 5:11Barry Ritholtz?

  So when you look back, when you were group treasurer or chief investment officer at, at the JP Morgan, division you were, you were involved in, what sort of lessons did you take away from that? You're, you're in the real world managing real risk, real portfolios. How, how did that experience change how you perceive risk?

• 5:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a great question. Um, and I'll tell you, so I obviously had a career with a background in, trading, running trading teams, both on the buy side and the sell side. And it was really that experience that this next piece that was transformative for me. And, um, you know, really brought us to the point where, um, my partner Derek Goodman and I decided let's form Merrick. And, but you know, I'm sure we'll get into that a bit, but what happened was I spent 20 odd years, trading mortgages, rates, corporate credit, high yield, products like that, working with specialty finance companies, some that I worked with, some I had a hand in running, this kind of universe.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  And then, uh, in late 2019, uh, the opportunity to move over, and this was a different building, different, you know, walled off key card, different team and be the CIO and the treasurer. So this is now, buy side, running the capital of the firm, the investment of the firm, hedging and managing structural risk, lots of things wrapped up in there. But the real thing was the point in time where this happened was, late 2019, a few days later was the repo crisis, if we remember that, when all of a sudden, if you wanted to borrow overnight against treasuries, it costs you 10%. Okay. Six months after that pandemic breaks out.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Why I bring that up is so much changed in dramatic size at rapid speed that I saw something I'd never seen before and it was how does the financial system really work? And what does it mean? And how does it apply to everything that I've done? And it was one of these moments where I felt like I just went from being the captain of the ship, you know, my own little thing, right? We'll be a little expansive with it. I went from being a captain of the ship to going to work in the engine room and seeing the actual gearing and how it works and how it doesn't and what could stop it from working. And you spend years, you know, you pull a lever, you think the boat goes faster, but you don't know why. And you don't know what could stop it from doing that and you don't know what could make

• 7:38Speaker 04

  it work more efficiently. But now you go work in the engine room and you see it and you understand it. It was just this aha moment, like we're two guys with glasses, right? So you know, when you go to the, you get a new prescription, you get your new glasses, you put them on, you're like, oh my God, I can see, right? And by the way, how was I walking around the streets of Manhattan with that old prescription, but now I can see clearly. And honestly, 20 odd years into my career, that's how I felt at that moment.

• 8:06Barry Ritholtz?

  In 2019?

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would say like in early 2020, about six months in, it was kind of like, oh my goodness, it's coming together now. I wish, I wish I had known this for the 20 years that preceded this, but I felt like now I know nothing and I'm starting to learn.

• 8:23Barry Ritholtz?

  So I have to ask, so my experience with 2019 was that wobble seemed to go by so quickly compared to 08, 09 where, you know, to me, you saw a lot of warning signs first in housing and then in securitized product and then in construction and then, you know, the market didn't peak till October 07 and the next 18 months were kind of fun if you were on the right side of it, but if you weren't, I'm It must have been a bloodbath. It sounds like you derived more out of the 2019 experience than you're on a desk in 08, 09. What sort of scar tissue did that leave? How informative was that moment?

• 9:08Speaker 04

  It's really interesting the way you kind of put those together. And so to set the table a bit, 07, 08, when I got to JP Morgan late 06, 07, 08, 09, I was in charge of, had a team, we traded asset-backed securities, say, credit cards, auto, student loans, subprime mortgages, remember those?

• 9:30Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  CLOs. So really kind of like the center of what ended up happening after that. And I would say it was so overwhelming at the time. I mean, we were there, 2:00 in the morning, hand-marking bonds. Okay, walking across the street between the two buildings, like, is there more information? This company might buy that company before the market opens. What else can we do? The numbers were huge. It was almost like a bit more than you could process at the time. But I think each one of these became, every step there was like, I understand what I'm doing better now because, but the first thing I ever did was, I started, I was a cash flow structure.

• 10:15Speaker 04

  And actually, at that point in time, the guy who ran the department was a friend of mine named Bruce Richards, who went on to start Marathon and has had a fantastic career and we keep in touch. And he said, I said, I want to be a trader. And he said, well, I want you to be a structure. Because if you learn how the cash flow works, how the structure works, then you'll be a better trader. Later on, I think each piece helped me understand the risk better and then the system it sits in, and that helps you understand the risk better. And then when you understand the risk better, you understand the system it sits in better, and it builds, and it builds on top of each other. So I would say, in 08, I learned more. In 08, we saw, we felt like we were the tip of the spear in like a bad way.

• 10:58Speaker 04

  And we could see it was getting worse and it was accelerating. And we could see that people were maybe even underestimating. And I remember some conversations around at the time. Um, that we were basically saying like, think bigger, think broader, think worse. That's the context we're talking about. But all of that helped me understand, how does my product I'm trading fit into an investment bank? How's an investment bank impact the system? Um, I think when I went into 2019, obviously a lot, time had passed, I'd had more experiences, et cetera. Um, I remember sitting in a meeting, we're in 7:30 AM traders meeting, this is with the CIO group.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  Um, and we go around the table, my, you know, rates lead, my credit lead, et cetera. And the repo guys walk in and they say, hey, we can lend against treasuries at 10%. Should we do more? And I said, guys, uh, this is my third day with this team, okay? Um, I'm the person in the room who knows the least about what you're talking about. But if you need my authorization, you have it, because that sounds pretty great.

• 12:07Barry Ritholtz?

  10% yield against with treasuries?

• 12:09Speaker 04

  That sounds fantastic. My response to you is, how much can we, not can we do more, like, how much can we do? Meaning more and more. Um, and that just became the beginning of like, why did that happen? How did we get here? What's the, where did it come from? Where does it go? And I found that certain people knew certain pieces, but not the picture. And then you're like, it, it was just starting to pull at it.

• 12:33Barry Ritholtz?

  And that was your job to know the whole picture?

• 12:35Speaker 04

  It be, it became, it became the only, it became the focus of what I wanted to know. Because unpacking that would help me understand, how do we get here? Why does this happen? And by the way, what are the pieces that put this all together? Um, and how do we, um, how do we take advantage of that? How do we protect ourselves? But also, how do we take advantage of that? So is this, the whole thing, um, was this one of those types of things? You say, I opened up a door, three doors behind it, and I want to keep going in that direction. And it felt to me, Like a purer and purer version of everything I'd done in my career. Getting closer and closer to the source and pricing.

• 13:14Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really fascinating. One of the things I think a lot of people don't realize about JP Morgan Chase during the financial crisis, and I never, doing the research for Bailout Nation, I never got this really sourced the way I would have liked to, but JP Morgan Chase had their own derivative scare a couple of years earlier. And the word was, Jamie just said, "Clear all this junk off of our balance sheet. We don't, we can't handle, this risk doesn't seem to be worth the potential upside." So, heading into 08, 09, they weren't dealing with the same sort of existential danger

• 13:57Barry Ritholtz?

  that Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo and go down the list, all had, all had to go through. They, they were, ended up being an acquirer of distressed assets, not a seller of distressed assets.

• 14:12Speaker 04

  Well, I think, I mean, it was a tremendous place to work. I worked with incredible people. I learned a lot. And I worked with great, great people that you're just part of a terrific team. It's fantastic place. I learned something that became transformative to everything I'd spent my career doing. So, that's why we set out to, and I said, "I want to do this." And that's why we set out to build Merrick. And we said, you know, I recall Derek and I sat down one day and I said, "Let me just, here's how I think about markets. I think about it in terms of money, capital, credit, liquidity, and regulation." That's my thought. Money, capital, credit, liquidity, regulation. MCCLR.

• 14:56Barry Ritholtz?

  How do you separate money from capital?

• 14:59Speaker 04

  So I think money to me is, how do you make it? How do you destroy it? How does it move through the system? To me, capital is a little bit more of, how much do you have? How do you measure it? How much do you have? Are you making more, are you destroying it? Credit is really, how is it being formed? How is it moving through the system? The financial system is changing now. It's very different than it was a few years ago. We actually, when we were, you know, really trying to get our ideas on paper, we wrote a paper that we outlined saying, we described what we thought was the new version of the financial system. We said, "The financial system is changing. You're de facto recreating Glass-Steagall. You have G-Sibs.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  If you come from some of this framework, you know, are the globally systematically important banks. Systemically important banks, think JP Morgan, Wells, Bank of America, et cetera. We said, "There are the new G-Sibs. People like Apollo, Blackstone, KKR, BlackRock. These are Aries. These are the folks that are actually making credit extension decisions in this economy." Okay, you have the traders like Citadel Securities, Jump, James, some of these other names everybody's familiar with. This is disaggregating the financial system and putting it into different buckets. So basically, we think about, where's it coming from? Where does it go? Who wins? Who loses? What are the flywheels here?

• 16:26Speaker 04

  This is a process that we apply to everything we do. Some of the guys on the team call it M-Clear, MCCLR. It's the lens that we look at because we believe money, capital, credit, liquidity, and regulation drives economies, markets, and prices. And then, you can really start to understand monetary policy, real estate, housing.

• 16:51Speaker 04

  The types of specialty finance companies we've talked about, consumer. So this to me actually explains how it all works and we apply that. It's a huge addressable universe. We trade rates, mortgages, securitized products, corporate credit, related equities. It's an enormous addressable universe with investors that have very narrow mandates, that transact at different points in time and sometimes non-economically and bound by potentially non-economic rules, which means there are a lot of overlaps that people don't take the advantage of, and there's a lot of gaps that they quite simply don't bridge. And the setup for all of this, I think, and I've seen some stuff.

• 17:37Speaker 04

  A lot of your listeners have seen quite a bunch of stuff. We've seen things go right, we've seen things go wrong. This is one of the best setups we've seen in a long time. And so that's why we went out to say, I saw some interesting stuff, I learned some interesting stuff, there's an opportunity set that we want to prosecute right now, and it is an incredible time to do so. So we built a team, sorry, go ahead.

• 18:03Barry Ritholtz?

  I was just gonna, no, I'm fascinated. I want to roll back to something you said earlier, which was Glass-Steagall is sort of being backdoor reapplied. Is that a function of people being risk averse? Or is that a function of people just specializing in their own silo? So you don't have, you know, Glass-Steagall for people who aren't economic and policy wonks, separated the FDIC safe banks from the riskier investment banks. And once that was repealed in the late 90s, didn't cause the financial crisis, but allowed

• 18:44Barry Ritholtz?

  all these banks to merge and get bigger, and maybe it made the crisis a little worse. But I don't, I don't think of it as the underlying cause. But the idea that the market is working its way back towards that is kind of fascinating. Let's address that.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  Right, as you laid out, like Glass-Steagall, to say, to oversimplify, basically said, like, you can hold deposits, you can underwrite securities, you can trade securities, things like that. And there were rules. Right now, there are like some rules that say what you can and can't do, but really, there's a lot more that has morphed into what people like to call private credit, or we're going to extend credit through these fashions, or some of the rules don't apply to this group. So we can trade the markets differently, or we can make markets in a way that maybe the big banks can't. And then the big banks say, well, we're viewed as super safe, because I would argue we are, and that has its advantages also. So it's like recreated these artificial boundaries.

• 19:47Speaker 04

  What is great for us and the way we look at the world is, we saw that, we see that, we understand that. We also see and understand and think about all day long, and put it into our portfolio construction and the risk that we build. It's all up for grabs again, right? So we've got Kevin Walsh nominated to be the Fed Chair, and Mickey Bowman is the Vice Chair for Supervision, and they are, I don't know what the right adjective for it is, but they're changing the rules and they're pulling some of them down. And in my opinion, people just don't understand which of them matter and which of them don't.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  And the market moves to place on some that simply don't matter, like its lack of understanding of what SLR was and how that worked. And we don't need to dive into that, but to simplify, they said, we're going to remove this rule, and it's a big deal. And we at Merrick said, you can take it off, it doesn't matter. So everything the market's doing in reaction to that is a potential opportunity for us.

• 20:51Barry Ritholtz?

  In other words, people are overreacting to a regulatory change that is insignificant long term.

• 20:57Speaker 04

  In that example, yeah.

• 20:58Barry Ritholtz?

  Coming up, we continue our conversation with Matt Sherwin, co-founder and chief investment officer at Merrick Capital, discussing why he launched the firm in 2024. I'm Barry Ritholtz, you're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

• 21:22Speaker 00

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• 22:32Barry Ritholtz?

  I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest today is Matt Sherwin. He is co-founder and chief investment officer of Merrick Capital, specializing in a variety of alternative credit and related private products. Previously, he spent 16 years at JP Morgan Chase, where he had a number of very important titles. Before that, Citigroup. Are we in all that unique a period of time? Is the opportunity set that much greater than what we typically see in the normal? You know, this is a little more geopolitically volatile administration than even the previous Trump administration. Is that a driver?

• 23:16Barry Ritholtz?

  Or is it the deregulation and misapprehension of what these rule changes mean?

• 23:22Speaker 04

  I think it's a combination of what's going on. So, we have, we just kind of use some little catchphrases among the team that help us sort of like, you know, gravitate around concepts or communicate quickly. We say this is an administration that's in the business of being in business. And that's just a, there's no opinion or judgment one way or the other. It's just, it's just a statement.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  What this environment is also, we also came up with something that we thought was just made us chuckle one. Like it's important to have a little bit of sense of humor. We found our investors actually do read the materials very closely and they tend to have a sense of humor, which is good. But we created this thing we called the one big beautiful chart. And we just said, you know, what they really need, they need rates to get down. And they needed to come down a lot more than what the market and the curve has already priced in because of how much debt the country has, what it costs, what they want to accomplish. So here's what they need to accomplish. And they're going to do everything they can to it. So, you know, we construct portfolio, we have a net, we have an investment thesis, we have a narrative. Everything we put in the book has to fit that narrative, has to

• 24:30Speaker 04

  contribute to what we're trying to achieve, has to be the best version of that, or has to protect us from what could go wrong. So getting back to your question a little bit, we think it's a very business forward environment, business forward administration. We think that it is one that needs rates to come down. We are going to have a new Fed chair in the middle of June. And there he'll say all sorts of things in the confirmation hearing, but really it will be a catalyst potentially for change in the middle of the year. And then we have a bias within markets to strip back some of the layers of of regulation. And away from whether you support that or not, I can tell you, because I've been on

• 25:15Speaker 04

  the other side of it, the layers of process and bureaucracy and spending your time back solving instead of what could we do better. When you change what your goal is and how you're pointed, you're going to get different results. We think that combination is spinning flywheels in the market now that.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  In our opinion, people are just, they're underestimating the power of some of these flywheels.

• 25:42Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. Last question before we talk a little bit about Merrick. In the old days, and I was never a big believer in this, but everybody else was. There was some constraints on deficits and ongoing government debt because the bond vigilantes would punish you. The bond vigilantes seem to have disappeared in part replaced by the stock vigilantes who any policy they don't like, they just sell off until they have their hissy fit until they get their way. And then, okay, thank you very much, and we're off to the races again. What do you think of the, you know, 80s, 90s era bond vigilantes?

• 26:25Barry Ritholtz?

  Is that just ancient history? There's no discipline on deficit spending anymore? Or, and by the way, I think deficits are not all that relevant. Look at Japan. Look at the US history. We've been warned about deficits and they haven't caused much of a problem most of this history.

• 26:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, look, I love the term, and I think we've seen some of those episodes. Last year, we saw around the, whatever we call Liberation Day in April. Like, there were a couple of days where treasuries and mortgages said like, enough. Okay, that's it. And we're either going to have one of those days where they are giving stuff away, or you gotta pull back. And I think what we saw was the administration did pull back. So I think in some level, it's still there. But part of what we do at Merrick and what influences our thought processes, big parts of this have been really broken down. The markets are so big now

• 27:22Speaker 04

  that it's been broken into specific functions. Like, people have a thing to do, and they do that in a narrow mandate. We have a more flexible mandate to us. The products, their widgets, their tools in the toolbox for us to achieve our goals and our investment thesis and the portfolio risk and construction and diversification that we'd like to have. But the markets are hyper-specialized in very, very large markets. So you get some of those episodes where it's like, oh, crowded trade, we gotta get out. I think the question of, does the administration react to the markets? Does the markets react to the administration? It's something that we've actually focused on quite a bit. We actually...

• 28:06Speaker 04

  You know, we wrote another piece in June of 2025 that we called the Worsch Fed. And it was just about what could happen. And we sort of went through to your point like the concept of risk-free rate and credit spread are completely intertwined and commingled now, and they don't exist separately. So I think that's some of the concepts you're getting at. Like, is this a problem for credit? Is it a problem for rates? Are those the same thing now? One of the most interesting things, and I would just say before we get back to your question is, what was really interesting observation to us was during the last government shutdown, whatever mini version of that we're going through right now, it was almost in the data

• 28:51Speaker 04

  was not forthcoming. And then Vol went down. So it was this sort of like, a little bit like if we don't know, maybe nothing's happening. But what it also was, was a little bit to the, to what you were saying is, when things were a little less hyper-focused, they actually were a little less jumpy around small moves. And that was a big takeaway, big takeaway for us. It's a big thing you're going to hear from Kevin Worsch if he ends up in the chair seat. You're going to hear a long narrative from him for his time in that seat of, we need to step back from the day-to-day and the minute-by-minute information and think

• 29:35Speaker 04

  about the big picture and the trend and where we're headed and be a little more forward-looking. I think that's the kind of guidance that you will get from that chair.

• 29:44Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. So, so let's just start out with why you left the comfort of a big shop to have the headache of your own firm. What's the elevator pitch? What problem does Marek Capital solve that couldn't be solved at a large Wall Street bank?

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Look, I think quite simply, there are some things that banks can do and some things that banks can't do. There are some things that they can do and that they don't want to do.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  In my career, I've always been involved in these types of markets being rates, mortgages, securitized products, corporate credit, the equities related to that around it, these types of specialty finance operating companies. And always felt that when you have, when you can apply the various lenses to these products, being the trader lens, the structure lens, the operator lens, you understand it better and you get the gearing and the pieces. And when you learn about the financial system that it sits within, then you actually can understand but take advantage of the risk and return in a more elevated and efficient way.

• 30:57Barry Ritholtz?

  I want to address that. Is it that the big firms, the bigger banks were risk averse and didn't want to take advantage of it, where they were prohibited on a regulatory basis, or when they're just doing their macro risk assessment, hey, we'll go this far, but no further?

• 31:13Speaker 04

  I think it's even simpler than that. We look at the world through our lens. We look at the world through the Matic lens of money, capital, credit, liquidity and regulation, which drives economies, markets and prices. That helps us understand the drivers of the capital markets that we sit within, helps us understand monetary policy, housing, finance, commercial real estate, finance, understand both the gearing of it. Then you can look at something and you can say, okay, I'm looking at Citigroup. I could buy it, I could sell it, I could understand what they're doing in the markets they have a footprint in, what that means for the markets, do I want to buy that? So like, where are the flywheels?

• 31:57Speaker 04

  What does it spin to next? So everything we were doing was very much about what do we want to do? Because we see a very large addressable opportunity where we have a unique perspective, a defined lens, and a way of applying that to these big liquid markets that we think very strongly we can take advantage of in a way that people simply haven't had the opportunity to learn about and to understand and apply to these products with the type of flexible mandate that we have, which boiled down means we look at the world a little differently.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  These are big addressable markets which have dislocations, volatility and opportunity all the time. And we can use that combination to achieve what's a very, very simple goal. Improve the return a little bit while reducing the risk a little bit.

• 32:48Barry Ritholtz?

  That's all anyone can ask for. Better returns at lower risk. I'm kind of fascinated by the overall Merrick investment philosophy. We'll get to, but let's, let's start a little bit with structure. I think of you guys as an alt credit shop, but you also look a little bit like a multi-strat shop. Like is it kind of a hybrid? Like, tell us about the structure.

• 33:13Speaker 04

  We just define what we do. Okay. We are who we are. We do it the way that we do. We run, we're, right now, we're running a hedge fund, which trades these products as, like I said, as tools in the toolbox, as, as widgets. We do it in one collaborative portfolio. So our setup, our structure, we've got an amazing team. We have specialists in rates, in mortgages, in non-agency mortgages and ABS, in credit, in CLOs. I am on the phone every day with traders and salespeople myself. We trade it as one book.

• 33:52Barry Ritholtz?

  One portfolio. So it's really a multi-strat within a single expression?

• 33:59Speaker 04

  It is what we think is the best expression of the trade.

• 34:04Barry Ritholtz?

  Or I shouldn't call it multi-strat. It's really multi-asset. It's a variety of different credit assets, all under one umbrella?

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Within our lane, okay, sticking to our knitting, what we believe we know very well, what we know we have a differentiated insight into and extracting from that. Okay. The team is phenomenal. They have a ton of buy-side and sell-side experience. They work very well together. It's very exciting to be, I mean, and additionally. Doing this together, like Derek and I doing this together, putting our name on the door, like Marek is Matt and Derek.

• 34:44Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Um, because we spent way too much time trying to think of what's a clever name.

• 34:50Barry Ritholtz?

  They've all been taken. Good luck in New York.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Means, you know, alpha extraction in Sanskrit or some something, you know, and Derek's wife one day was like, enough. It's Marek, Matt and Derek. Now go do some real work. And I think she said in a little bit more of a spicy way, but we were like, yeah, that could work. All right. Let's do that.

• 35:11Barry Ritholtz?

  I think just a little footnote, if you've ever incorporated an LLC or any other entity in New York State, every Greek and Roman god, every Babylonian god, every Cerebus, name the creature from mythology, it's either a fund or an LLC. They're all, they're all taken. It's astonishing.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  But the real point I, I wanted to make also, um, that I don't want to lose is this is putting our name on the door. Okay. It's our name. It's our reputation. Cause and that really cemented it for us. That was something we really wanted. I took some time off and which was fantastic. And I met some of the most amazing and interesting people in the world. When you're unaffiliated, people speak to you in a different way because they had no one to talk to. Okay. I sat down with the CEO of one of the world's largest pension fund, uh, sovereign wealth funds. And we had, and I'd never met the person before. We had an hour long conversation because he just needed to talk to someone. And I learned a lot in that. And I met some of the most interesting people in venture cap, in, um,

• 36:15Speaker 04

  alt, in private equity, et cetera. And it was just more way of learning parts of the system. But it got to the point where after my, you know, academic wander through the wilderness, I was like, okay, you know what? Um, this is at the time we had three teenagers living at home and it was an amazing time. I used to always say, you should be able to retire in your 40s and go back to work in your 50s. Like that's the way business should work. Um, obviously that's a luxury that very few have, but, um,

• 36:41Speaker 04

  I was getting to the point where I was like, okay, I feel great. I want to do this. I miss markets. I love this. I want to get back to it. And I want to do it in the way that I want to do it.

• 36:51Barry Ritholtz?

  How long of a gap was that?

• 36:52Speaker 04

  I took like about a year off. You know, it's a, you know, it's a riot. So in our deck, we put a little timeline of my experience and Derek's experience and just to help people understand who hadn't met us, who we are. And then the very end I put, you know, this is my background's simple. I was here for 10 years. I was there for 16 years. And then we put like a little one year nugget on the end of the timeline that just said chilling, but no G, no G, just C H I L L I N.

• 37:20Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  I don't remember.

• 37:21Barry Ritholtz?

  Which is a very un-Wall Street sort of thing.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  It was like our 900th version of the deck and we were just getting a little punchy. We're like, it made us laugh. Okay. You gotta have a sense of humor. It made us laugh. So we're like, this is going in. Every investor brings it up. They bring it up and they love it. And you know what? To us, it's like, wow. You are reading every part of the deck and also it's nice to know you have a sense of humor, but getting back, getting back to it was like.

• 37:49Barry Ritholtz?

  People, this is always shocking. People read the footnotes.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  That's been a big learning for us. They read it. So when we were doing all this, you know, my wife was like, yeah, why would you want to do something for anybody else? And I thought to myself, exactly. What are we going to work hard at? What are we going to make sure succeeds? The thing that we put our name on the door, our reputation that we believe other people don't get it, that we believe is the right way to approach these markets that we believe can extract from a setup is which is one of the best that we've ever seen. So if you tick all those boxes, why would you do it for anybody else?

• 38:35Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really intriguing. So it's 2026. I'm legally obligated to ask, how do you use artificial intelligence in research, portfolio, construction, or operations at Merrick Capital?

• 38:47Speaker 04

  Sure. I would, I would sort of make two, two points. I'm an AI optimist. That's not one of my two points. That doesn't count. We use it every day. We build stuff more quickly. We build our own tools and we build them more quickly than we ever could before. You know, the guys on the team, they're building stuff at their desk in a week that would have taken a year to do somewhere else, literally, and I know because I've been in that. And then, once you built it, it would have taken like six months to get approval to release it into your system, etc. This is like light speed versus what we used to do. Now, changing a little bit of how you frame that question, AI is a really, really interesting thing in financial markets as well. Okay, so I don't

• 39:32Speaker 04

  think we're there yet, but we're going to get to a place where people are using it for risk management, they're using it for compliance, they're using it for KYC. But put all that aside. The most interesting to me right now is, we look at the AI capex boom, and we say, here is a product that is commercial real estate with securitization technology around it. You're talking about, where is it? Is it built? If not, how long is it going to take to build it? Who are the tenants? How long are the leases? What are they paying? What's it worth when it's all done? Is there residual risk like you have in an auto lease? Only some of it comes to the securitized market because it's just not that. That market is not big enough for it. So it comes to the corporate bond market.

• 40:14Speaker 04

  So that to us is like, that's the type of opportunity that piques our interest, where we say, this is something that looks like ABC, and it's being wrapped up and put into a different market that is asking one, two, three. And those are good questions, but it's really like, put it all together. Look at all the factors. What are the additional? Are you getting more structure? Are you getting less? Are you charging for the risk? Are you paying away for it? So the AI capex boom to us is actually like a source of very cheap risk for us to look at. And each one has a little bit of different flavor, and we're very opinionated about which ones we like.

• 40:55Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh. It sounds, it sounds really fascinating. It also sounds like... Um, anytime there's a novel area, the opportunity for mispricing seems to really.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  There's that, there's that. Um, we look at some of those first time issuers. We have like, we have some things in the book. We have something called the North Star Playbook, which is what are companies and bonds that have clear missions and objectives that they can execute on that are aligned with us, with the instrument that we have, or misaligned, or that they're not able to execute. But some of it, it's actually not just about the novel structures. Let's look at agency mortgage backed securities. Those have been around for a long time. Okay, couple of weeks ago, tweet from the press, or whatever we call a post on Truth Social, 4:26 PM. I've instructed my representatives to buy 200 billion of agency MBS.

• 41:51Speaker 04

  Boom, bomb, in the agency mortgage back market. This is a, there are, was it 12 billion? 12 trillion of these things outstanding in the agency mortgage market is 9 trillion, hundreds of billions of a trade every day. And that was a aftermarket post tweet.

• 42:13Speaker 04

  So then.

• 42:13Barry Ritholtz?

  Are you out buying into that, that rise to take advantage? Or you, are you a price taker or a price maker? What are you doing when that, that's happening?

• 42:22Speaker 04

  It's both. We look instantly at like, what does this mean? What was our expectation now? In that instance, we expected the GSEs, who will be the one to actually buy, we expected the GSEs to be buyer. I think our view was a little bit at the high side or out of consensus even. We thought this is going to be a support mechanism for this market over the course of the year. Fanny and Freddie are going to buy a lot of this stuff.

• 42:42Barry Ritholtz?

  Assuming they haven't already started to.

• 42:44Speaker 04

  Well, they had been, and that's a great point. They had been. But buying 200 billion with like an aftermarket tweet and nobody knew like, is it going to be 200 and then another 200? Are you going to start buying, are you going to buy 40 tomorrow? How's this all going to work? This exceeded even our expectations and you saw right away, I think we were positioned for that type of event. We were positioned to take advantage of some of the policy risk as opposed to get hit by some of the policy risk. You could see that there was a massive short covering rally right after that. And you could see that that wasn't necessarily people's expectations and how they were, how they were set up for.

• 43:24Barry Ritholtz?

  I have, I have a mortgage related question to this, but I'm going to save it to the next segment. Coming up, we continue our conversation with Matt Turwin, co-founder and chief investment officer of Merrick Capital, discussing credit and risk in today's markets. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

• 43:56Speaker 01

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• 44:28Barry Ritholtz?

  I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Matt Turwin, co-founder and chief investment officer of Merrick Capital. Previously, he spent 25 or so years running credit and various types of risk at JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup. So we were talking earlier about the Trump tweet directing the GSEs to buy $200 billion worth of agency paper. You would have thought that should have sent yields plummeting and mortgage rates down, which would stimulate the housing market. I assume part of the motivation for that tweet and for that purchase.

• 45:09Barry Ritholtz?

  What, what's going on in that market and why does it seem so difficult to drive rates lower?

• 45:16Speaker 04

  Right. That's a great question. And as silly as it sounds, like 200 billion, it's just not enough.

• 45:22Barry Ritholtz?

  Pocket cash. Right. Walking around money.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  That's one way.

• 45:26Barry Ritholtz?

  I mean, in a $12 trillion market, 12 trillion, it's not even 1%.

• 45:31Speaker 04

  If you are, if you've got 35 trillion in treasuries outstanding and yeah, yeah. It's a big number and it moves the needle, but what they, they really want to move it and keep it there. Like, that's a little bit of the hard part because don't forget that the Fed owns 2.2 trillion. So they're going to buy 200 billion. Didn't give a lot of information and that sort of helped them in that moment. The lack of information after probably led some of it to kind of like bleed out and unwind a bit. But the Fed owns 2.2 trillion and those are paying off. And that's approximately 180 billion a year.

• 46:11Speaker 04

  So then you start to think about like, well, if the rate moves and mortgage prices go up, are some of the money managers just going to sell 100 billion over time? And do you kind of neutralize it? So I think it's helpful. It's indicative. Here's the real takeaway for us. Okay, so at that moment, it's how do we trade this? What's the price? What's the next step? But then we're really thinking from there, like, what does this mean? What's going to happen next? And sort of coming full circle. What it really does is show you how hard they're going to try to drive the mortgage rate down, to drive rates down overall, to sign up for an agenda and a plan to get rates down.

• 46:56Speaker 04

  Okay, so some of it is what do we do in that specific market? And some of it is how's it informing our view of the bigger picture?

• 47:03Barry Ritholtz?

  So you guys have two, I, I don't want to say conflicting, but somewhat different risk factors you're juggling with. Obviously, when you buy paper, you're thinking long-term and we want to watch this play out to our broader thesis. But at the same time, you're actively trading on the short-term. How much do these complement each other or do you ever find yourself long in one duration of the portfolio and short in another? How do you balance this out?

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, we have longs and shorts across the book within mortgages, within credit. We there's we're, you know, long what we like and short what we don't to keep it super simple. Or long what helps contribute to our thesis or and vice versa and, you know, protect the convexity profile that we're looking to achieve. We are, we trade every day. We are active in these markets. It's part of more of a sort of a medium term thought process, how they're going to play out. But every day is iterating on that. Is this still what we think? Are we positioned with the best version of it? Do we have the bonds that are going to contribute to what we are trying to achieve? Like, right now, we're

• 48:19Speaker 04

  very focused on the flywheels that exist within financing markets. And if you think about what does that mean? Okay, so rates come lower, we talked, we rates go lower, we talked about that a little bit. But credit spreads are also really tightening. And when rates are lower and credit spreads are tighter, your cost of borrowing has gone down, means you can refinance all sorts of assets. It means some assets are even at that point in time worth more, valued highly. Now that it's worth more, you've got a lower LTV loan that you could take out an even tighter credit spread on. And how did these spin? And what is this? So this is very much what we're thinking about now. I think the market

• 48:59Speaker 04

  completely underestimates the power of those flywheels and what it can be achieved. So we that is one of, we look at our portfolio and say, we want to have about 20 trades in it. And a trade is not one line item, a trade could be 30 line items. But the flywheel is a trade. It's a little bit of a maybe even a bigger, higher order one. But we look at what is happening at that moment? Is there something to take advantage of? But also, what are the ripple effects of what's happening in that moment? And what does the market need to do? What is it going to do? Does it understand this? And then we unpack it and say, like, where's the opportunity? So coming back to what we talked about, we believe

• 49:44Speaker 04

  when you look at the world through this lens, we look at markets through the merit lens.

• 49:52Speaker 04

  That the lack of connections made through these markets and the lack of extracting from some pretty obvious pockets are an opportunity, like we talked about, to improve your return and reduce your risk. And it's a process. So it's just as much a process and a machine through which you're extracting alpha from the market. We have our views, we hope to be right. It's also, it's a process through which you work through these markets that you extract all the time. And the mandate is pretty clear. Like, as I think of it, the mandate's very clear. You need to make money when markets go up, and you need to make money when markets go down.

• 50:35Speaker 04

  Every day, every month, every quarter, every year. And you probably won't, but that's the mandate.

• 50:41Barry Ritholtz?

  That's the target.

• 50:42Speaker 04

  And it's quite simple when you frame it out that way.

• 50:44Barry Ritholtz?

  You mentioned in 2019, there was a sea change in how you perceived what was happening in the market and how different that had become. Has that affected how you look at and define risk? Risk definitions have obviously changed over your career, but 2019 was such a sea change. What's different about managing risk today?

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, I believe managing risk at scale is a skill. Okay? You have your numbers, and you want to know what those are. And those are indicators, and those are starting places. VAR is a number and a starting place and an indicator. Stress is a number. DV01, CS01. These are, I like to look at the world in a stress-based framework, and we create a bunch of different stresses. Some are quite simple. Rates go up, rates go down. Credit crunch, a flight to quality. Some, we had our little, like, you know, we're getting a little punch. We had one we call QE forever and ever. And looking at these, it's really about, like, it's a starting place for a conversation.

• 51:51Speaker 04

  Okay? Because you do need to know where it's coming from and what's the attribution. What's the return attribution? Where are you hoping it comes from? And what's the risk attribution? And very importantly, what could go wrong? Understanding that, what you're trying to achieve, but knowing where the exits are. Like, I think it's really like a philosophy to risk and to managing risk. To make sure you're pointed to achieve your goals while managing your risk properly and knowing what you would do if things changed, right? You have a plan and then things change.

• 52:29Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. What, when you're looking out at a variety of different opportunities, what do you think today presents the best risk opportunity? Looking at structured credit, corporates, relative value? What is really drawing your attention?

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, we really thought that one of the places to extract from the flywheel is in securitized markets. Actually, as an example, like, we've been very focused on trophy quality office in gateway cities, and this goes back a little ways.

• 53:00Barry Ritholtz?

  These are the super A residential, um, commercial real estate offices.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  So, that all came to be from us pulling at the thread of how the financial system works. We talked a little bit about the new GSIBs. And what you had was everybody was going back to work, back to the office, but took longer than we kind of, looking back on it, that took a long time. The part of the financial system that was changing were those new GSIBs, Apollo, Ares, KKR, Blackstone, BlackRock. And they were coming back to the office and they were growing. And they were finding that two things. One, they needed nice offices to kind of, you know, get everybody where they wanted to be. But also, they were growing and they outgrew what they had. And then they went looking for more. And what they found was, there's actually not that much trophy real estate out there. And so, like, our view on the evolving financial system led us to have very strong conviction

• 53:50Speaker 04

  about a supply-demand imbalance in commercial real estate when applied correctly. And then we just looked for what's the best place. And it's tightened a lot, but actually, we think it continues to and has been because it's like the, it's continued to be one to two steps behind the fundamentals. So, what that really means, the way we think, to wrap it up in a nutshell, this is a triple B bond that we think is a double A.

• 54:16Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting because everybody's painting with a broad brush of, hey, forget B's, even A buildings are 60% occupied in terms of staff.

• 54:26Speaker 04

  But they're not. They're 100% occupied with a waiting list.

• 54:28Barry Ritholtz?

  I mean, in terms of staff returning to office. So it's fully leased, but the, what is it? Castle key cards are running 60% of pre-pandemic levels in a lot of cities. But the A+, the bigger shops, the JP Morgans, they want everybody back in the office, as does Goldman Sachs, as does a lot of these places, and they're all in trophy properties.

• 54:49Speaker 04

  And it's not just New York. It's Miami. It's actually San Fran has come a long way. There are certain buildings there that we like. We actually, I would say, a little bit out of consensus, we like DC. Certain parts, not the government buildings, but nice offices. Like we said, this is administration that's in the business of being in business, which means you got to go see them and make your case. You want to get some business done, which means you need lawyers with a nice conference room that need a decent office and et cetera, et cetera. I mean, like, it sounds a little glib, but it's true.

• 55:18Barry Ritholtz?

  It's the cost of doing business.

• 55:19Speaker 04

  It's true. And so you can see there are certain companies that are buying buildings, knocking them down in DC and building brand new ones. And there are buildings that are being taken offline to convert to resi. By the way, everything we wrapped up in what we said, the conversion from office resi is actually spinning faster now. In DC, some buildings are being, and just outside DC, some buildings are being converted to data centers. So actually, like, stocks being removed all the time. Anyways, it's just an example of how, like, we're pulling on threads and we're finding where we can best take advantage of it and, like, what are the next couple of steps. And ultimately, we're looking for what's something that's already gotten better, except the price hasn't changed yet.

• 56:02Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh. That's really, that's really interesting. You, you've mentioned stress scenarios a couple of times. We know that correlations have a tendency to go to one and liquidity disappears.

• 56:14Speaker 04

  Well, I think I've seen that personally, right? Liquidity disappears. I think, I would just wrap that up. I make two comments to people. I say, like, one, you don't go out of business because of your assets. You go out of business because of your liabilities.

• 56:30Speaker 04

  And when you start looking at that side of the balance sheet first, then you understand things a little bit better. And then also, you know, with traders and all the people I work for, it's really great because some of the people I hired a long time ago, they're MDs at places. I actually take a lot of pride in the people I've worked with who have gone on and done fantastic things. I really, really hate the phrase money good. Okay, I don't think anybody should be allowed to say it. It is this like false crutch. I also, in many, many conversations have said to people, I think you're right. In fact, you've convinced me. I believe you are right. I'm saying you know, you're going to get fired long before we know the answer to this question. Okay, let's take everything we thought, everything we've known, and let's put it into the context of how do we apply this in markets? What's going to happen?

• 57:15Speaker 04

  What's everybody else doing? And how do we take advantage of that?

• 57:20Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh, really, really fascinating. Last question before I get to my favorite questions. What do you think investors-

• 57:27Speaker 04

  I thought those were your favorite questions.

• 57:28Barry Ritholtz?

  Oh, no, you'll, you'll, you'll see the favorite questions.

• 57:31Speaker 04

  All right.

• 57:32Barry Ritholtz?

  What do you think investors in the credit and alt space are not talking about, but perhaps should be? What topics, assets, geographies, data points are getting overlooked, but really shouldn't?

• 57:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, so it's a great question. We touched on it a little bit. They're underestimating the power of this flywheel. Like, with the background I've had, and we've talked about, and I've seen a lot of things blow up, like we could come up with a lot of examples of things that could go wrong. I think they're underestimating the things that could go right, or what the power of financing and the mechanics around financing and the provision of liquidity and credit, credit spreads, when they're good and when they're tight and when the machine is flowing, what that financial engineering can really do to both uncover value and create value, I think they're underestimating. The other quick thing is, in the middle of the year-

• 58:29Speaker 04

  If Kevin Warsh ends up sitting in that seat and if we get a little bit of the setup that he's looking for, he's going to change everything, right? So he believes we're going to have a big productivity dividend from AI and we're going to have a big productivity dividend from deregulation and then that would allow you to have lower rates and a smaller Fed balance sheet at the same time. And if he gets a little bit of what he needs to craft that argument, we're going to have a very different second half of 26 than the first.

• 59:01Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really interesting. All right, let's jump to our favorite questions, our speed round. We'll get you guys out of here at a reasonable time. Starting with, who are your mentors who helped shape your career?

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Oh, I've worked for some pretty amazing people and I tried to learn from everyone. I just had, the bosses that I've had are, you know, legends in this industry, whether it's Bruce Richards, T. and Perlo, Jimmy DeMar, Matt Zimes, Daniel Pinto. I mean, these are, these are people who defined these markets and they all had a huge impact on my career.

• 59:36Barry Ritholtz?

  Really interesting. Let's talk about books. What are you reading now? What are some of your favorites?

• 59:41Speaker 04

  Oh, you know, but like I am in front of a computer screen and reading so much and I read so much analytics, research, et cetera. When I get home, it's a little bit more like hang out with my wife and kids and a little TV.

• 59:54Barry Ritholtz?

  Well, that's my next question. What are you listening to or streaming? Give us your favorite Netflix, Amazon Prime, whatever.

• 1:00:02Speaker 04

  I will watch pretty much anything Taylor Sheridan, you know, like

• 1:00:06Barry Ritholtz?

  We just finished season two of Landman. It's so good.

• 1:00:09Speaker 04

  Like Landman, all the Yellowstone's, everyone, 1918, 23, 1920, all of those, Lioness, any of those.

• 1:00:17Barry Ritholtz?

  Lioness was also great. There should be a new season of that coming out one of these days.

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, there is. I mean, I think I've watched both seasons like 100 times.

• 1:00:25Barry Ritholtz?

  Final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a college grad interested in a career in investing, credit, trading, what have you?

• 1:00:34Speaker 04

  I just think it's not, you know, it doesn't have to be a commitment for life. Just look at it as what's something I'm interested in being interested in. I think you can pick the kind of people you work with and you want to be around good people who will teach you, who will support what you're doing and just say, I'm going to give this a spin for three to five years. And if I like it, I love it, maybe I'll sign up for another five. But, you know, you have an opportunity to try something out and see if it's for you.

• 1:01:02Barry Ritholtz?

  And our final question, what do you know about the world of trading credit, investing in alternative sources of liquidity and other products that would have been helpful 25 or so years ago when you were just getting your legs on, do you?

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  I wish I knew a fraction of what we are applying at Merrick, any point before we did this. If I knew a drop of what we're doing when I sat in other seats, yeah, I'll put that all in the I wish I knew bucket.

• 1:01:35Barry Ritholtz?

  Really, really absolutely fascinating. Matt, thank you for being so generous.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:01:39Barry Ritholtz?

  With your time. We have been speaking with Matt Sherwin. He's co-founder and chief investment officer of Merrick Capital. If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure and check out any of the previous 600 or so we've done over the past 12 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. I would be remiss if I didn't thank the crack team that helps us put these conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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• 1:03:36Speaker 07

  This message comes from Edward Jones, where they believe rich is about more than saving and investing. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.