Alternative Angles

What happens between an investment idea and its implementation can have a significant impact when it comes to liquid alts. In this episode of Alternative Angles, Host Steve Rosen travels to the trading desk with guest David Mulvany, Fidelity's head of Alternatives Trading and Portfolio Finance. Together, they explore the role a specialized trading desk can play in execution, liquidity management, portfolio financing, risk oversight, and real-time market intelligence.

Tune in for a behind-the-scenes look at how traders and portfolio managers work together to navigate complex markets, and the trading capabilities investors may want to consider when evaluating liquid alternative managers.

As private credit continues to grow and evolve, what separates truly disciplined lenders from the rest? In this episode of Alternative Angles, host Steve Rosen sits down with Fidelity's Therese Icuss, Managing Director, Direct Lending, and Audie Apple, Managing Director, Equity Capital Formation, to explore the art and science of direct lending. Together, they break down the underwriting decisions, structural protections, and portfolio management practices that can shape investment outcomes. 

The conversation examines the gap between traditional middle market lending and larger-market transactions, and why rigorous credit analysis, independent insights, and underwriting discipline remain powerful sources of competitive advantage.

As private credit continues to evolve and competition intensifies, where can direct lending still deliver a meaningful edge? In this episode of Alternative Angles, Host Steve Rosen sits down with Fidelity’s Head of Direct Lending, David Gaito, to explore:

• How leverage, covenant structures, and underwriting discipline shape downside protection
• The impact of dispersion, vintage risk, and scaling on long-term outcomes and manager edge
• What current market dynamics, including fundraising trends and capital flows, signal for investors

What drives performance when investing in CLO tranches—is it structure or credit—and why does it matter for income-oriented investors and institutional portfolios? In this episode of Alternative Angles, host Steve Rosen sits down with Fidelity portfolio managers David DeBiase and Michelle Liu for a focused discussion on investing in collateralized loan obligation (CLO) tranches, their design, the leveraged loan collateral that underpins them, and how risk and return are distributed across the capital structure.

Listen in as Dave and Michelle explore where CLO tranches fit within a portfolio, the trade-offs versus traditional fixed income, and key considerations when allocating to AAA versus mezzanine tranches.

Extension strategies sit at the intersection of alpha efficiency and portfolio construction, but how do they work in practice? In this episode of Alternative Angles, host Steve Rosen sits down with Gilbert (Gil) Haddad, Fidelity’s chief investment officer of advanced strategies and research, for an in-depth discussion on how systematically implemented equity extension strategies can unlock incremental alpha while maintaining disciplined risk management. 

Listen in as Gil goes inside Fidelity’s systematic alpha platform, exploring how proprietary fundamental research and alternative data are integrated into a scalable, resilient investment process—and where extension belongs in a modern institutional portfolio.

High-yielding commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) sit at the crossroads of real estate debt and liquid credit investing. In this episode of Alternative Angles, Fidelity Portfolio Manager Matt Torchia and Host Steve Rosen discuss how this nuanced and less efficient market can help provide investors with an attractive current yield, idiosyncratic alpha, and portfolio diversification.

Tune in for insights on:

• Conducting bottom-up, property-by-property valuations.
• Assessing shifts in commercial real estate fundamentals and loan underwriting standards.
• Navigating the market and CMBS structures after a rise in interest rates and a fall in property values.
• CMBS investment examples.

Collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) have been a cornerstone of structured credit for decades, delivering durable performance through multiple market cycles. But what makes them so resilient? In this episode of Alternative Angles, Fidelity’s Tim Hartshorn, managing director and head of CLO Capital Markets and Structuring, and Fidelity Portfolio Manager Kevin Nielsen join Host Steve Rosen to break down the architecture of CLOs—from senior secured loan portfolios to structural credit enhancements and protective covenants—and explore why CLOs remain a powerful tool for portfolio diversification and income generation.

Tune in for insights on:

• How CLOs are built to withstand volatility
• The role of active management in navigating credit cycles 
• Key trends shaping the CLO market today

In this episode of Alternative Angles, Fidelity Portfolio Manager Niraj Gupta and Host Steve Rosen explore the intricate world of merger arbitrage—a strategy focused on capturing returns from announced corporate transactions while managing downside risk. Through real-world examples, including successful and failed deals, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how merger arbitrage synthesizes financial, legal, and trading expertise with corporate strategy assessment to create a diversifying, market-neutral strategy for institutional portfolios.

Among other insights, the conversation covers:

• The nuances of the discipline, what it is—and what it’s not.
• Risks and rewards of merger arbitrage for an asset allocator overseeing a diversified portfolio.
• Fidelity’s approach to merger arbitrage and how it produces results for investors.

Managed futures use a trend-following framework to observe the path and detect changes in the direction of financial assets. In this episode of Alternative Angles, Fidelity Portfolio Manager Roberto (Rob) Croce joins host Steve Rosen to discuss how models are built and used to spot the price path persistence of a security—a stock, bond, currency, or commodity—and how the directional price drift is ridden until the model indicates its trajectory has been disrupted. 

Rob has spent the last 15 years investing in managed futures. Along with his team, Rob has developed a differentiated and disciplined systematic long/short strategy that is capital efficient and invested in a broad and diverse set of markets. Topics include:

• The features, attributes, and return profiles of a managed futures strategy that might lead an investor to consider adding it to a multi-asset portfolio.
• Favorable and challenging market conditions for a managed futures strategy.
• The human factor driving the existence and persistence of trends.
• How quantitative models combine signals to identify trends and assess conviction, leading to trade implementation.

Listen in and learn about the systematic effort to harness Fidelity’s proprietary fundamental data, alternative data, and quantitative capabilities in new ways to produce pure alpha strategies for investors. Join Alternative Angles host Steve Rosen for a sit-down with Gilbert (Gil) Haddad, Fidelity’s chief investment officer of advanced strategies and research, as they dig into what makes alpha capture strategies tick. 

Among other insights, their conversation focuses on:

• How to think about different types of alpha capture as a component of a broader portfolio.
• Sorting through alpha capture signals, including alternative data, extracted from Fidelity’s decades of fundamental research and portfolio management to generate investment ideas.
• Opportunities for data exploration and utilization–and the future of Fidelity’s alpha capture business.