Masters in Business

Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin

March 13, 2026

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  • Matt Cherwin's move to CIO and Treasurer at JPMorgan in late 2019, coinciding with the repo crisis and pandemic, provided a transformative "engine room" view of the financial system, fundamentally changing his perception of risk. 
  • Marek Capital's investment philosophy is built around a five-lens framework: Money, Capital, Credit, Liquidity, and Regulation (MCCLR), which they use to understand market drivers and identify opportunities where specialized mandates create dislocations. 
  • The current market environment is viewed as one of the best setups seen in a long time, driven by a combination of a business-forward administration needing lower rates and a market underestimating the power of financial engineering flywheels created by lower rates and tightening credit spreads. 

Segments

Early Career and Education
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(00:02:26)
  • Key Takeaway: Practical finance concepts like bond math and discounted cash flows were more engaging than abstract economics courses like ISLM curves.
  • Summary: Matt Cherwin initially disliked abstract economics courses in college but found immediate interest in practical finance topics such as bond math and discounted cash flows. He realized his interest lay where numbers added up to something tangible, like making money. This realization guided his early career focus toward applicable business and finance concepts.
2019 Career Shift and System Insight
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(00:05:29)
  • Key Takeaway: Moving to CIO/Treasurer in late 2019 provided a critical, transformative view of the financial system’s inner workings, illuminated by the subsequent repo crisis and pandemic.
  • Summary: Cherwin’s move from trading to the buy-side CIO/Treasurer role in late 2019 was transformative, allowing him to see the financial system’s gearing and potential failure points. The immediate succession of the repo crisis and the pandemic revealed how the system truly functions, feeling like putting on a new, clear prescription for the first time after 20 years in the industry.
Lessons from 2008 vs. 2019
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(00:08:53)
  • Key Takeaway: The 2008 crisis provided deep, overwhelming lessons on product structure and systemic impact, while the 2019 repo crisis offered a clearer, more immediate understanding of the entire system’s mechanics.
  • Summary: During 2008, Cherwin was on the front lines trading asset-backed securities, learning risk structure step-by-step, which felt overwhelming at the time. The 2019 repo crisis, however, provided an ‘aha moment’ where he saw the entire picture of system function, realizing many specialists only knew pieces, not the whole context.
Marek Capital’s MCCLR Framework
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(00:14:34)
  • Key Takeaway: Marek Capital’s investment lens is defined by the five drivers: Money, Capital, Credit, Liquidity, and Regulation (MCCLR), which they believe drive economies, markets, and prices.
  • Summary: Cherwin articulated his market view through the MCCLR framework, distinguishing money (creation/destruction) from capital (measurement/quantity). This framework helps them analyze the disaggregation of the financial system, noting that alternative asset managers like Apollo and Blackstone are the new Globally Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) for credit extension.
Regulatory Misinterpretation Opportunity
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(00:18:59)
  • Key Takeaway: Market overreactions to regulatory changes, such as the removal of certain rules like SLR, present opportunities when the market misunderstands the long-term significance of the change.
  • Summary: The market is recreating artificial boundaries similar to the repealed Glass-Steagall Act through specialization in private credit versus large banks. Marek Capital capitalizes on this by identifying regulatory shifts where the market overreacts to changes that are not significant long-term, creating actionable opportunities.
Rationale for Launching Marek Capital
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(00:29:06)
  • Key Takeaway: Marek Capital was founded to exploit opportunities in big, liquid markets where their unique MCCLR perspective and flexible mandate allow them to improve returns while reducing risk, something large banks cannot or will not do.
  • Summary: The firm was established because large banks have limitations on what they can or want to do, whereas Marek has a defined lens (MCCLR) to apply to large addressable markets. Their goal is to achieve better returns at lower risk by exploiting dislocations and gaps that others, bound by narrow mandates, fail to bridge.
Marek’s Structure and Philosophy
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(00:32:24)
  • Key Takeaway: Marek operates as a multi-asset strategy within a single collaborative portfolio, focusing on extracting alpha within their specialized credit lane by having specialists across rates, mortgages, and credit.
  • Summary: The firm runs a hedge fund where various credit assets (rates, mortgages, CLOs) are treated as ‘widgets’ in one collaborative book, functioning as a multi-strat within a defined credit lane. Putting their names on the door cemented their commitment to succeeding with their unique approach to the current market setup.
AI Impact on Operations and CRE
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(00:37:56)
  • Key Takeaway: AI is used daily to build proprietary tools at light speed, and the AI CapEx boom is viewed as a source of cheap risk structured like securitized commercial real estate.
  • Summary: The team builds internal tools using AI much faster than traditional approval processes allowed, accelerating development from years to weeks. They view the AI CapEx buildout as a form of securitized commercial real estate, analyzing tenant leases and residual risk, which presents mispricing opportunities.
Policy Impact on Agency MBS
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(00:40:43)
  • Key Takeaway: A single aftermarket tweet directing $200 billion in agency MBS purchases exceeded expectations for GSE support, causing a massive short-covering rally that demonstrated policy risk’s immediate impact.
  • Summary: A tweet directing the purchase of $200 billion in agency MBS, despite the $12 trillion market size, caused an immediate, sharp rally that exceeded Marek’s already supportive expectations for GSE intervention. This event highlighted the need to be positioned to take advantage of policy risk rather than just being hit by it.
Flywheels in Financing Markets
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(00:46:57)
  • Key Takeaway: The market underestimates the power of financial engineering flywheels created when rates fall and credit spreads tighten, which lowers borrowing costs and increases asset valuations.
  • Summary: When rates decrease and credit spreads tighten, the cost of borrowing falls, leading to asset refinancing and higher valuations. Marek focuses on trades that capture the ripple effects of these flywheels, aiming for a mandate to make money whether markets rise or fall.
Risk Management Philosophy
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(00:49:47)
  • Key Takeaway: Managing risk at scale is a skill best approached through a stress-based framework where indicators like VaR are starting points for conversations about return and risk attribution.
  • Summary: Risk management involves using stress scenarios (like rate changes or credit crunches) as conversation starters rather than absolute limits. The philosophy emphasizes knowing the return attribution, risk attribution, and having clear exit plans for what could go wrong, prioritizing liability management over asset performance.
Trophy CRE Opportunity
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(00:51:25)
  • Key Takeaway: The evolving financial system, with new G-SIBs (like Apollo, Blackstone) growing and demanding prime office space, creates a supply-demand imbalance in trophy commercial real estate.
  • Summary: Marek identifies trophy office space as a key opportunity because the growing alternative asset managers require high-quality offices, creating scarcity. This leads to a view that certain triple-B rated office bonds are fundamentally double-A quality, despite the market’s broad negative brush on commercial real estate.
Overlooked Credit Topics
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(00:56:18)
  • Key Takeaway: Investors are underestimating the positive power of financial engineering when liquidity and credit spreads are favorable, and they may be unprepared for a potential shift if Kevin Warsh advocates for lower rates driven by AI and deregulation dividends.
  • Summary: The market underestimates the value creation possible from tight credit spreads and efficient financing mechanics when the system is flowing well. Furthermore, if the incoming Fed chair successfully argues for lower rates based on productivity gains from AI and deregulation, the second half of 2026 could look very different from the first.