YouSaid · the spoken record

Matt Cherwin

lines on the record: 77
first: 2026-03-13
most recent: 2026-03-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And we just said, you know, what they really need, they need rates to get down and they needed to come down a lot more than what the market and the curve has already priced in because of how much debt the country has, what it costs, what they want to accomplish. So here's what they need to accomplish, and they're going to do everything they can to. So, you know, we construct portfolio. We have a net, we have an investment thesis, we have a narrative. Everything we put in the book has to fit that narrative, has to contribute to what we're trying to achieve, has to be the best version of that, or has to protect us from what could go wrong. So getting back to your question a little bit, we think it's a very business forward environment, business-forward administration. We think that it is one that needs rates to come down. We are going to have a new Fed chair in the middle of June, and he'll say all sorts of things in the confirmation hearing.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a combination of what's going on. So we have, we just kind of used some little catchphrases among the team that help us sort of like, you know, gravitate around concepts or communicate quickly. We say this is an administration that's in the business of being in business. And that's just a, there's no opinion or judgment one way or the other. It's just a statement. What this environment is also, we also came up with something that we thought was just made us chuckle one. It's important to have a little bit of sense of humor. We found our investors actually do read the materials very closely and they tend to have a sense of humor, which is good. But we created this thing we called the one big beautiful chart.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be the Fed chair, and Mickey Bowman is the vice chair for supervision, and they are what the right adjective for it is, but they're changing the rules and they're pulling some of them down. And in my opinion, people just don't understand which of the matter and which of them don't. And the market moves to place on some that simply don't matter, like it's lack of understanding of what SLR was and how that worked. And we all need to dive into that. But to simplify, they say, we're going to remove this rule, and it's a big deal. And we at Merrick said, you can take it off. It doesn't matter. So everything the market's doing in reaction to that is a potential opportunity for us. In other words, people are over.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right now, there are some rules that say what you can and can't do, but really there's a lot more that has morphed into what people like to call private credit, or we're going to extend credit through these fashions, or some of the rules don't apply to this group. So we can trade the markets differently or we can make markets in a way that maybe the big banks can't. And then the big banks say, well, we're viewed as super safe because I would argue we are, and that has its advantages also. So it's like recreated these artificial boundaries. What is great for us and the way we look at the world is we saw that. We see that, we understand that. We also see and understand and think about all day long in a put it into our portfolio construction and the risk that we build, it's all up for grabs again, right? We've got Kevin Warsh nominated to...”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Address that. Right. As you laid out like Glasseau to oversimplify basically said like you can hold deposits, you can underwrite securities. You can trade securities, things like that. And there were rules.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enormous addressable universe with investors that have very narrow mandates that transact at different points in time and sometimes non economically and bound by potentially non economic rules, which means there are a lot of overlaps that people don't take advantage of and there's a lot of gaps that they quite simply don't bridge. The setup for all of this, I think, and I've seen some stuff A lot of your listeners have seen quite a bunch of stuff. We've seen things go right. We've seen things go wrong. This is one of the best setups we've seen in a long time. And so that's why we went out to say I saw some interesting stuff. I learned some interesting stuff. There's an opportunity set that we want to prosecute right now. And it is an incredible time to do so. So we built a team. Sorry, go ahead. No, I'm fascinated.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is disaggregating the financial system and putting it into different buckets. So basically we think about where is it coming from? Where does it go? Who wins? Who loses? What are the flywheels here? This is a process that we apply to everything we do. Some of the guys on the team call it MClear, MCCLR. The lens that we look at because we believe money, capital, credit, liquidity, and regulation drives economies, markets, and prices. And then you can really start to understand monetary policy, real estate, housing, the types of specialty finance companies we've talked about, consumer. So this to me actually explains how it all works. And we apply that. It's a huge addressable universe. We trade rates, mortgages, securitized products, corporate credit, related equities.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's very different than it was a few years ago. We actually, when we were really trying to get our ideas on paper, we wrote a paper that we outlined saying we described what we thought was the new version of the financial system. We said the financial system is changing. You're de facto recreating Glass-Steagall. You have G-SIBs if you come from some of this framework you know are the globally systematically important banks, systemically important banks think JP Morgan Wells, Bank of America, et cetera. We said they're the new G-sibs. People like Apollo.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think money to me is how do you make it? How do you destroy it? How does it move through the system? To me, capital is a little bit more of how much do you have? How do you measure it? How much do you have? Are you making more? Are you destroying it? Credit is really, how is it being formed? How is it moving through the system? The financial system is changing now.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think, I mean, it was a tremendous place to work. I worked with incredible people. I learned a lot. And I worked with great, great people that you're just part of a terrific team. It's a fantastic place. I learned something that became transformative to everything I'd spent my career doing. So that's why we set out to, and I said, I want to do this. And that's why we set out to build Merrick. And we said, you know, I recall Derek and I sat down one day and I said, let me just, here's how I think about markets. I think about it in terms of money, capital, credit, liquidity, and regulation. That's my thought. Money, capital, credit, liquidity, regulation. MCCLR.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It became the focus of what I wanted to know because unpacking that would help me understand how do we get here why does this happen? And by the way, what are the pieces that put this all together? And how do we take advantage of that? How do we protect ourselves? But also how do we take advantage of that? So it was this whole thing was this one of those types of things you say I opened up a door, three doors behind it, and I want to keep going that direction. And it felt to me like a purer and purer version of everything I'd done in my career, getting closer and closer to the source and pricing.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Against with treasury. That's fantastic. My response to you is, how much can we, not can we do more, like how much can we do, meaning more and more. And that just became the beginning of like, why did that happen? How did we get here? Where did it come from? Where does it go? And I found that certain people knew certain pieces, but not the picture. And then you're like, it was just starting to pull out. And that was your job.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I'm the person in the room who knows the least about what you're talking about. But if you need my authorization, you have it because that sounds pretty great.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're basically saying, like, think bigger, think broader, think worse. That's the context we're talking about. But all of that helped me understand how does my product I'm trading fit into an investment bank? How does an investment bank impact the system? I think when I went into 2019, obviously a lot time had passed. I'd had more experiences, et cetera. I remember sitting in a meeting wherein 7.30 a.m. traders meeting, this is with the CIO group. And we go around the table, my rates lead, my credit lead, et cetera. And the repo guys walk in and they say, hey, we can lend against treasuries at 10%. Should we do more? And I said, guys, this is my third day with this team.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And actually, at that point in time, the guy who ran the department was a friend of mine named Bruce Richards who went on to start marathon and has had a fantastic career and we keep in touch. And he said, I said, I want to be a trader. And he said, well, I want you to be a structure. Because if you learn how the cash flow works, how the structure works, then you'll be a better trader. Later on, I think each piece helped me understand the risk better and then the system it sits in and that helps you understand the risk better. And then when you understand the risk better, you understand the system it sits in better and it builds and it builds on top of each other. So I would say in 08, I learned more. In 08, we saw, we felt like we were the tip of the spear in like a bad way. And we could see it was getting worse and it was accelerating. And we could see that people were maybe even underestimating. And I remember some conversations around at the time that we”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So overwhelming at the time. I mean, we were there two in the morning hand marking bonds. Okay, walking across the street between the two buildings, like, is there more information? This company might buy that company before the market opens. What else can we do? The numbers were huge. It was almost like a bit more than you could process at the time. But I think each one of these became every step there was like, I understand what I'm doing better now because the first thing I ever did was I started as a cash flow structure.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Informative was that mom. That's really interesting the way you kind of put those together. And so to set the table a bit, 0708, when I got to JP Morgan late 06. 07, 08, 09, I was in charge of, had a team we traded asset-backed security, say credit cards, auto, student loans, subprime mortgages, remember those? CLOs really kind of like the center of what ended up happening after that. And I would say it was.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say in early 2020, about six months in, it was kind of like, oh my goodness, it's coming together now. I wish. I wish I had known this for the 20 years that preceded this. But I felt like now I know nothing and I'm starting to learn.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You get new prescription, you get your new glasses, you put them on, you're like, oh my God, I can see, right? And by the way, how was I walking around the streets of Manhattan with that old prescription, but now I could see clearly. And honestly, 20-odd years into my career, that's how I felt that moment.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why I bring that up is so much changed in dramatic size at rapid speed that I saw something I'd never seen before. And it was, how does the financial system really work? And what does it mean? And how does it apply to everything that I've done? And it was one of these moments where I felt like I just went from being the captain of the ship, you know, my own little thing, right? We'll be a little expansive with it. I went from being the captain of the ship to going to work in the engine room and seeing the actual gearing and how it works and how it doesn't and what could stop it from working. And you spend years, you know, you pull a lever, you think the boat goes faster, but you don't know why. And you don't know what could stop it from doing that. And you don't know what could make it work more efficiently. But now you go work in the engine room and you see it and you understand it. It was just this aha moment. Like we're two guys with glasses, right? So, you know, when you go to...”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The investment of the firm hedging and managing structural risks. Lots of things wrapped up in there. But the real thing was the point in time where this happened was late 2019, a few days later, was the repo crisis, if we remember that, when all of a sudden if you wanted to borrow overnight against treasuries, it cost you 10%, okay, six months after that pandemic breaks out.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a great question. And I'll tell you, so obviously I had a career with a background in trading, running trading teams, both on the buy side and the sell side. And it was really that experience that this next piece that was transformative for me and really brought us to the point where my partner, Derek Goodman, I decided let's form Marik. And I'm sure we'll get into that a bit. But what happened was I spent 20-odd years trading mortgages, rates, corporate credit, high yield, products like that, working with specialty finance companies, some that I worked with, some I had a hand in running, this kind of universe. And then in late 2019, the opportunity to move over, and this was a different building, different walled off keycard, different team, and be the CIO and the treasurer. So this is now by side running the capital of the”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, which is interesting too because I also am a little bit like this a little exaggerated, but I'm a little bit like a history buff. So like it was interesting that that what didn't didn't appeal to me because I do like kind of the history of it. How did we get here? And I think that's always something that I'm like in this form as well going back to learn more about financial systems, how money works, how they thought it used to work, different schools of thoughts. And I think it really helps you understand where you've been, where you are, where you're going.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recommendation I would give to other people took me a little while to realize what I was interested in, what I was interested in being interested in. And when I got into some of those classes, kind of the more financy kind of stuff, I was like, this I like. This makes sense. I want to learn more. And I think that's kind of where it starts. I always wanted to get, I just like when there's, you know, numbers on the page. It adds up to something. You're trying to make money. It's hopefully positive at the end. It might be negative. It's pretty clear cut. At least the goal is. And I always like that. I always gravitate.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Version of humans, looking back on, I wish I had listened a bit more at some of those others. But, you know, something I say maybe we'll get to is like it just.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was like, you know I shouldn't have hated as much as I did, but at the time it was ISLM curves, it was supply, it was demand, et cetera. And it just didn't feel very practical to me and I didn't do very well in it. I didn't go to class very often. I didn't do very well. But then we got to kind of the next semester, which I think they called Finance 101 and was like Bond math, discounted cash flows, and I was like, Oh, this I like. Okay, I am in the right place. Well, it's much more.”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but that's super interesting because our oldest is a sophomore in college now, and he's in the business school at American. And I was just talking to him yesterday, and he said, I'm now in, I think they call it like finance for business. I really like this new class. And I said to him that Reminds me so well of when I was in undergrad business school and I did the first couple semesters at Econ and I hated it. I had”
2026-03-13 · Masters in Business · Risk and Reward with Marek Capital Co-Founder Matt Cherwin · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source