FICC Focus

The Federal Reserve may cut faster and to a lower interest rate then the market is pricing, Bloomberg Intelligence Chief US Interest Rate Strategist Ira Jersey says on this Macro Matters edition of the FICC Focus podcast series. Jersey flies solo on this episode, discussing his takeaways from the June FOMC meeting, his view on the timing and pace of rate cuts and what it would mean for the Treasury yield curve.

As cross-asset volatility resets following peak tariff fear, the geopolitical risk premium in the oil options market has moved higher. In this edition of the All Options Considered podcast, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Chief Global Derivatives Strategist Tanvir Sandhu is joined by Matt King, founder of Satori Insights, to discuss the impact of changes in central-bank reserves, liquidity and flows on markets.

“We are sourcing, identifying misunderstood, high-quality middle-market companies where we have a real edge...,” said Sandor Hau, Managing Director & President, Credit, at Charlesbank, who oversees the company’s opportunistic credit investment team. Hau joined Bloomberg Intelligence’s Noel Hebert on the latest episode of the Credit Crunch podcast to discuss cutting teeth on the ground in the Asian financial crisis, missing out on the dot.com boom, a private equity approach to credit investing and tradeoffs between primary- and secondary-market investments. He also spoke about valuing heritage, leveraging learnings across the firm and portfolio companies and much more.

The Credit Crunch podcast is part of BI’s FICC Focus series.

Sentiment is improving across the emerging-market investment landscape, but it takes local expertise to manage risk and crystallize returns. Thea Jamison, Founder and Managing Director of Change Global Investment, joins Bloomberg Intelligence Chief Emerging Markets Credit Strategist Damian Sassower to break down the opportunities and risks facing emerging-market equity practitioners across the globe. Jamison and Sassower touch on performance dispersion, market catalysts and idiosyncratic opportunities across a broad range of EM countries, from Greece and Poland to Nigeria and Vietnam.

The EM Lens podcast is part of BI’s FICC Focus series.

"If you've got [a company] that just doesn't have a logical strategic long-term owner or the industry's consolidated in a way that nobody can regulatorily do it, you're buying into a problem...And so we try to be very thoughtful about that coming in. And sometimes that means you can't do a deal. Sometimes that means you have to do it even cheaper to account for a discount on the backend too."David Geenberg, Head of Strategic Value Partners' North American Investment Team, explained to BI's Noel Hebert and Phil Brendel why contemplating exit strategies up front is part of SVP's investment process. Geenberg detailed how SVP's global investment team blends complementing skill sets to help it tackle all facets of its portfolio companies' investment cycle, including sourcing paper, restructuring, litigation, identifying corporate leaders, M&A, and strategic planning (6:25). Prior to that, BI's Noel Hebert and Phil discussed the return of risk appetite in May as tariffs were reeled back. The podcast concludes with BI's Negisa Balluku joining them for a roundtable discussion on Hertz, Serta, Azul, Sunnova, and WeightWatchers (1:12:45).

This week we’re talking economics and finances of the world’s game with professor, author and podcaster Kieran Maguire of University of Liverpool. (We apologize in advance for those who thought this show was about gridiron football, but with the Club World Cup beginning June 14, we thought it would be interesting to discuss football/soccer finance and some economic implications of the 2026 World Cup in North America.)

Maguire joins Macro Matters podcast host Ira Jersey, Bloomberg Intelligence’s chief US rates strategist, and Business of Sports co-host and EM Lens host Damian Sassower, BI’s chief emerging market fixed income strategist. The group discusses football club valuations, the economic benefits (or pitfalls) of hosting the World Cup, and how clubs used debt to finance player transfers and club operations.

The Macro Matters podcast is part of BI’s FICC Focus series.

Credit globally recovered to nearly where it was as trade tensions eased, with various trade deals or tariff pauses while rate cuts are priced for central banks, especially the ECB and BOE but not the Fed. The big question is how to play credit after this recovery. In this episode of our Credit Crunch podcast, Mahesh Bhimalingam, Global Head of Credit Strategy at Bloomberg Intelligence, and Craig Scordellis, CIO of Credit at CQS UK, discuss how alternative credit and leveraged finance offer opportunities after the spread rally. They discuss tariffs, their effect on global inflation and currencies, central bank policy and outlook, state of credit fundamentals and default views for the next year across Europe and the US.

“I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a capitalist. I love growth, I love to back entrepreneurs,” said Ted Koenig, founder, chairman and CEO of Monroe Capital, on how he sees the firm’s expansion to over $20 billion in assets under management from its founding in 2004. Koenig joins Bloomberg Intelligence’s Noel Hebert and Sam Geier on this episode of Credit Crunch podcast to discuss the company’s founding, attracting capital, identifying partners for growth and the market landscape. The three talk about diversification and CLOs, how big is too big and giving back to the community.

The structural dollar bearish case is holding into 2H, though fiscal considerations are what dollar bears may lean on going forward after  being driven mainly by tariff uncertainty and the impact on the de-dollarization narrative. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Chief G10FX Strategist Audrey Childe-Freeman talks to Stuart Paul, US and Canada economist at Bloomberg Economics, about the US debt dynamics and how the fiscal outlook could shape and drive the dollar view into 2H. Stuart and Audrey also touch on the narrow path to a potential dollar recovery via short-term cyclical dynamics should the US economy prove more resilient than expected. This isn’t Bloomberg Intelligence’s central working assumption, but it’s a scenario worth acknowledging.

“I’m just waiting for the T-bill tsunami to come, and it can’t come soon enough,” says Sue Hill, senior portfolio manager and head of the Government Liquidity Group at Federated Hermes. Hill joins Macro Matters hosts Ira Jersey, Bloomberg Intelligence chief US rates strategist, and Will Hoffman, BI’s senior associate US-Canada rates strategist, to discuss the state of the money-market complex amid debt-ceiling-induced supply scarcity. The trio examine the limits and nuances of alternative liquidity-management wrappers, where individual needs and mandates dominate asset compositions. They discuss the debt ceiling, and how her team manages allocation decisions around low but non-zero default risks, as well as unattractive yields relative to alternatives. Also addressed was how the Federal Reserve’s RRP facility may have a permanent home as part of the money fund ecosystem, and the industry’s slow but steady push toward central clearing as the mid-2027 deadline inches closer.