Alpha Exchange

With a penchant for math and a degree in biology from Cornell, Dave Rogal landed at BlackRock in 2006. With the housing bubble in full sway, he was part of a group that provided asset liability management advice to large institutions. Three years later, as the dust settled from the financial crisis, he joined the fixed income division, mentored by industry experts, and quickly exposed to the world of pricing dislocations that populated the system well into 2009.Now the head of Total Return and Inflation Portfolios, Dave shares some of the lessons learned on risk management through crisis periods. Reflecting on vol events like the Covid market shock, he asserts that simplification of exposures is critical as correlations can become unstable and unreliable. We spend most of our time learning about Dave’s framework for thinking about inflation, a variable he suggests must be approached with humility. On a forward-looking basis, he sees disinflation in autos, a component that was hot, but is now starting to feel