Your go-to source for the latest alternative investment insights from Fidelity.
Hear from leading portfolio managers and researchers as they discuss current market trends and emerging alternative strategies to help you unlock new ways to drive portfolio returns.
These seasoned investment professionals have all earned their stripes in their highly nuanced markets as investment managers and institutional investors, their knowledge and savvy are extremely valuable, and we want to share their perspectives with you.
Customized, not commoditized: The key to traditional middle market underwriting
Host Steve Rosen interviews Fidelity's Therese Icuss and Audie Apple about disciplined underwriting and structural protections that drive successful direct lending in the middle market.
30 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT
Back to the future of direct lending: The alpha edge in the traditional middle market
Host Steve Rosen interviews Fidelity's Head of Direct Lending, David Gaito, on finding alpha in the traditional middle market by analyzing leverage, covenants, and market dynamics.
1 Jun 2026TRANSCRIPT
CLO tranche investing: A paradox of static structure and dynamic collateral
Host Steve Rosen interviews Fidelity portfolio managers David DeBiase and Michelle Liu about the performance drivers and portfolio fit of CLO tranche investing.
27 Apr 2026
Unlocking systematic alpha through equity extension strategies
Extension strategies sit at the intersection of alpha efficiency and portfolio construction, but how do they work in practice? In this episode of Alternative Angles, host Steve Rosen sits down with Gilbert (Gil) Haddad, Fidelity’s chief investment officer of advanced strategies and research, for an in-depth discussion on how systematically implemented equity extension strategies can unlock incremental alpha while maintaining disciplined risk management.
Listen in as Gil goes inside Fidelity’s systematic alpha platform, exploring how proprietary fundamental research and alternative data are integrated into a scalable, resilient investment process—and where extension belongs in a modern institutional portfolio.
5 Mar 2026TRANSCRIPT
Commercial mortgage-backed securities: The crossroads of real estate debt and liquid credit
Fidelity Portfolio Manager Matt Torchia and Host Steve Rosen explore how commercial mortgage-backed securities offer investors attractive yield and diversification through property valuations and market navigation.
Fidelity's Tim Hartshorn and Kevin Nielsen explain to host Steve Rosen how collateralized loan obligations deliver durable performance through market cycles and remain a powerful tool for portfolio diversification in this interview.
17 Dec 2025
Inverting risk and capturing the spread: Merger arbitrage explained
Fidelity Portfolio Manager Niraj Gupta explains merger arbitrage to Host Steve Rosen, detailing how it balances financial, legal, and trading expertise to potentially diversify institutional portfolios in this interview.
19 Nov 2025
Managed futures: Systematically following the trend until it bends
Fidelity Portfolio Manager Roberto Croce discusses with host Steve Rosen how managed futures employ trend-following frameworks to detect changes in financial asset direction, offering insights into building models that spot price path persistence in securities during this interview.
20 Oct 2025
Capturing alpha: A bridge between quantitative and fundamental disciplines
Host Steve Rosen interviews Gilbert Haddad, who explores Fidelity's alpha capture strategies, including alternative data and fundamental research, to generate investment ideas.
27 Jun 2025TRANSCRIPT
Uncovering opportunities in direct real estate
Ellen Hall and David Kozlicki explore direct real estate investing with Steve Rosen, examining risk, return, commercial property strategies, and public versus private markets in this interview.
15 May 2025TRANSCRIPT
Opportunistic and distressed debt investing: The strategies, stories, and intricacies
Investment experts Harley Lank, Nate Van Duzer, and Bill Wall explore opportunistic credit and distressed debt strategies with host Steve Rosen, revealing how they identify inefficiencies and unlock potential in stressed credit through complex restructurings in this interview.
31 Mar 2025TRANSCRIPT
Exploring options and options-based investing strategies
Fidelity portfolio manager Eric Granat discusses options-based investing strategies with host Steve Rosen, including benefits, risks, and use cases for investors in this interview.
3 Mar 2025TRANSCRIPT
Deconstructing Convertible Bond Arbitrage
Host Steve Rosen interviews Seth Gold and Michael Youngworth about convertible bond arbitrage, examining its potential as an uncorrelated absolute return source with low volatility.
3 Dec 2024TRANSCRIPT
Diving into High Yield Private Real Estate Lending
Host Steve Rosen interviews Fidelity's Bill Maclay about high yield private real estate lending strategies and market insights.
26 Nov 2024
Pattern Breaking (and Following) in Venture Capital
Chris Pariseault, Karin Fronczke, and Mike Maples explore the art of spotting pattern breakers and followers in venture capital, revealing the key strategies for identifying revolutionary ideas and high-performing management teams.
7 Oct 2024
Direct Lending
Chris Pariseault hosts the first episode of "Alternative Angles," a podcast series on alternative investments, featuring David Gaito of Fidelity Investments and Ariel Goldblatt of StepStone Group. They discuss the direct lending market, which is a $1.2 trillion segment of the $1.8 trillion private debt market. Direct lending involves private debt issued by small and mid-sized companies, often due to inaccessibility to public markets. The conversation highlights the importance of culture, the inefficiencies in the market, and the need for a disciplined approach to investment. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities in the current market environment, including the impact of rising interest rates and the importance of diversification. Here is a breakdown of this episode:
Introduction to the Direct Lending Market
David Gaito's Journey into Middle Market Credit, an all-weather asset class
Ariel Goldblatt's Path to Direct Lending and the stability and resilience it brings to a portfolio
The Investment Culture at Fidelity and StepStone
Selection and Evaluation of Direct Lending Managers
David Gaito on Fidelity's Direct Lending Strategy
Market Dynamics and Future Outlook
Conclusions and Final Thoughts
Inside a recent episode
Customized, not commoditized: The key to traditional middle market underwriting
Published 28 Aug 2026 · Transcript excerpt
[…] And so, you know, I think this is largely been done on the basis, the rationale that Therese mentioned that larger borrowers are safer credits, which sort of implicitly suggests that you're going to get a better investment outcome. But, you know, the data actually contradicts that. If you look at the data, the traditional middle market historically has produced slightly higher returns after defaults and recoveries. So, you know, net of any incremental risk. when compared to the largest borrowers served by direct lenders. And if you take a step further and more granular look at the dispersion of returns in those two respective segments of the market, the dispersion of proxy for risk is actually smaller, narrower in the traditional middle market than it is in the upper middle market. […]
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