Liquid alternative investment

In other words, what ultimately appears above the waterline, the portfolio and its performance, is underpinned and powered by a large and consequential structure below it.

In today's conversation, we'll go beneath the surface of Liquid Alts with our guest, David Mulvany, Fidelity's head of alternatives trading.

And we'll explore how a specialized trading team drives capital and execution efficiency while helping shape the portfolio composition and performance that investors ultimately see.

David, welcome to Alternative Angles.

And I can say with certainty, if you can trade emerging market equities, you can trade pretty much anything.

And post that, I returned to Boston and currently in my role as head of alternatives, as you mentioned.

This was a group that was carved out of the equity department in 2021, really to align ourselves with asset management's focus on building a world-class liquid alts platform.

The group

I asked him on the show today because he sits right at the intersection of asset owners, allocators, and alternative managers.

And throughout his career, he's given expert counsel to some of the largest institutional investors in the world on all things liquid alts.

It could be manager research, portfolio management, due diligence.

He's kind of a jack of all trades.

Given your academic studies and your long career in the industry, I thought you were the right person to kind of open up with some historical framing.

Our industry generally lacks a sense of its own histories.

So let's start with your read on the evolution of liquid alts.

I mean, you could begin pre-GFC, when in my view, there were just like a handful of managers dominating the space.