Rebecca Patterson has always sought out new career challenges, willing to take risks in the process. Amidst the Asian financial crisis in 1997, Rebecca was hired into a Strategist position within the asset management side of JP Morgan, giving her early exposure to one of those 100 year market storm events that seems to actually happen every 10 years. She began building out a macro, data driven framework that was underpinned by the vast array of complex linkages between the economy and markets. In 2012, she joined Bessemer Trust, serving as the CIO and overseeing $85 billion of client assets.

At the heart of our conversation is uncertainty, a reality in markets that Rebecca has considerable respect for. In this context she shares her risk management process going into the 2016 US election and the detailed work her team did to game out a number of scenarios and their potential impacts.

We shift to Rebecca’s time spent at Bridgewater Associates, where she served as the firm’s Chief Investment Strategist until recently, and learn about her assessment of the US macro climate. Here, Rebecca reviews the asset price damage that occurred in 2022 due to the fast rise in real rates and expresses a cautionary view on risk markets. On her mind is the potential that implied Fed cuts do not materialize as currently implied by the inverted shape of the yield curve. While the big picture - one in which overall growth is decelerating and monetary policy remains tight – leaves her cautious, Rebecca does see potential opportunities on the long side in emerging market debt, where countries like Brazil are close to done with their monetary policy hiking cycles.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Rebecca Patterson.