As Global Head of Equity Derivatives Research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Ben Bowler is helping the firm’s institutional client base understand the complex risk dynamics that impose themselves on today’s markets. His process often leads him across asset classes, looking for linkages and developing stress indices that may provide early warning signs for US equity markets.

Our discussion first considers the recent SPX vol event, which, from a short-term severity standpoint, Ben puts in a category with the GFC and Covid. He further makes the point that since the Tariff uncertainty was self-imposed, it was as if we were in the midst of the Covid crisis but already had the vaccine in hand.

We then explore the work that Ben and his team have done on the concept of fragility. Here, he argues that the speed and magnitude of vol spikes, flash crashes and tantrum in markets has increased. In fact, in US single stocks, he suggests that fragility is at an all-time high with the reaction to earnings faster and more violent. Two factors may be playing a role. First, there is substantial crowding in certain risk exposures, like large cap tech. And second, liquidity provision, increasingly electronic in nature and sometimes rapidly withdrawn during times of stress.

Lastly, we discuss the history of innovation and how investors have generally pulled forward the benefits of path-breaking new technologies, leading to asset price bubbles. Here, Ben is thinking about right tail risk and how important optionality may be in hedging the risk that the AI bubble could inflate substantially.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Ben Bowler.