TTU151: What Comes After 60/40? Systematic Thinking, BlackRock Style ft. Jeff Rosenberg
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 74 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Niels and Alan sit down with BlackRock’s Jeff Rosenberg to examine how the post Covid shift from too little to too much inflation is reshaping portfolios. Jeff explains why bond and equity correlations have changed, why fixed income is drifting back toward income rather than pure diversification, and how fiscal pressure and soft financial repression may influence rates. They explore what systematic really means at BlackRock, from trend ETFs and defensive alpha to market breadth and execution. The conversation ends with the rise of liquid alternatives, whole portfolio thinking and growing equity concentration risk.
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Episode Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction, Jeff’s role at BlackRock Systematic and setting the agenda
04:09 - From too little to too much inflation and the end of divine coincidence
09:32 - Wage dynamics, “prices are too high” and persistent, not resurgent, inflation
14:48 - Bond equity correlation, the changing role of fixed income and income versus diversification
19:55 - Fiscal dominance, debt loads and the risk of soft financial repression
25:21 - What “systematic” means at BlackRock across beta, factors and pure alpha
30:44 - Trend as a systematic return stream and why BlackRock entered the ETF trend space
35:58 - Breadth, capacity and why market selection matters more than cocoa
41:12 - Defensive alpha explained using a credit lens on equities and crisis behaviour
46:27 - Execution, implementation alpha and using BlackRock’s liquidity river
51:39 - Constraints of wrappers, leverage limits and designing strategies for ETFs
56:54 - Growth of liquid alternatives, 50 30 20 and replacing the old 60 40 mindset
01:02:10 - Equity concentration, big tech, AI and the need for uncorrelated return streams
01:07:32 - Whole portfolio thinking, total portfolio approach and final takeaways
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You know, that's the challenge within all alternatives, whether they're private, public, |
| 0:12.0 | trend, systematic, fundamental. And so we've seen that as well in the trend in the trend space. |
| 0:19.0 | We've tried to be very careful in how we've implemented |
| 0:21.9 | ours, and I think our performance sort of a testament to that, but the risks that you highlight |
| 0:27.3 | are important as well. And so, you know, you've got to kind of look under the hood a bit at |
| 0:33.1 | what you're at what you're getting in these various offerings. |
| 0:41.2 | And that's one of the ways to manage the dispersion within the manager selection problem within liquid alternatives |
| 0:44.6 | and all alternatives, I should say. |
| 0:48.1 | Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. |
| 0:52.0 | Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes, and their |
| 0:55.3 | failures. Imagine no more. Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from |
| 1:02.2 | the best hedge fund managers in the world so you can take your manager due diligence or |
| 1:06.7 | investment career to the next level. Before we begin today's conversation, remember to keep |
| 1:11.7 | two things in mind. All the discussion we'll have about investment performance is about the past, |
| 1:16.6 | and past performance does not guarantee or even infer anything about future performance. Also |
| 1:22.1 | understand that there's a significant risk of financial loss with all investment strategies, |
| 1:26.4 | and you need to request and understand |
| 1:28.4 | the specific risks from the investment manager about their product before you make investment |
| 1:32.8 | decisions. |
| 1:33.9 | Here's your host, veteran hedge fund manager, Nealz Kostrup Larson. |
| 1:43.3 | Hey everyone, and welcome to another edition of our Top Traders on Plug series, |
| 1:47.2 | where today Alan Don and I are delighted to be joined by Jeff Rosenberg, |
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