Anna Raytcheva's guest appearances

Anna Raytcheva

Alpha Exchange

Macro Hive Conversations With Bilal Hafeez

Tania Reif

Lindsay Politi

Michael Pettis

Alberto Gallo

Raghuram Rajan

Benn Eifert

Jay Pelosky

Nancy Davis

George Goncalves

Alex Gurevich

Juliette Declercq

James Grant

Andy Redleaf

Jared Dillian

Corey Hoffstein

OwlTail

This episode is supported by private equity platform Moonfare. Anna founded Sonya Capital Management in December 2016. Prior to that, Anna spent over twenty years at Citigroup, where she oversaw a multi-billion dollar balance sheet and large teams of traders as the Head of the Strategic Trading Desk, Co-Head of Risk Treasury and Head of the Agency MBS trading desk. Anna traded through eight central bank tightening and easing cycles and a few financial crises, such as the Asian financial crisis, the Dot-com bubble and the Global Financial crisis. When she left Citigroup, the WSJ featured her as ‘Citigroup's last proprietary trader’. She graduated with honours from Princeton University with a degree in Mathematics. In this podcast we discuss:  Difference between trading on the sell-side versus at own fund Framework used to invest in markets How to use flow information to validate views The value of machine learning How to identify market regime changes The impact of risk transfers on market volatility How bubbles can be rational The difference between high-frequency trading and macro Views on the current reflation theme Two major risks: US tax changes and China decoupling Market to watch - yen Views on crypto markets Books that influenced Anna:  The Second Machine Age (Brynjolfsson, Mcafee),  Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman) 

This episode is supported by private equity platform <a href="https://www.moonfare.com/macrohive/" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Moonfare</a>. Anna founded Sonya Capital Management in December 2016. Prior to that, Anna spent over twenty years at Citigroup, where she oversaw a multi-billion dollar balance sheet and large teams of traders as the Head of the Strategic Trading Desk, Co-Head of Risk Treasury and Head of the Agency MBS trading desk. Anna traded through eight central bank tightening and easing cycles and a few financial crises, such as the Asian financial crisis, the Dot-com bubble and the Global Financial crisis. When she left Citigroup, the WSJ featured her as ‘Citigroup's last proprietary trader’. She graduated with honours from Princeton University with a degree in Mathematics. In this podcast we discuss: <ol> <li>Difference between trading on the sell-side versus at own fund</li> <li>Framework used to invest in markets</li> <li>How to use flow information to validate views</li> <li>The value of machine learning</li> <li>How to identify market regime changes</li> <li>The impact of risk transfers on market volatility</li> <li>How bubbles can be rational</li> <li>The difference between high-frequency trading and macro</li> <li>Views on the current reflation theme</li> <li>Two major risks: US tax changes and China decoupling</li> <li>Market to watch - yen</li> <li>Views on crypto markets</li> <li>Books that influenced Anna: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Machine-Age-Prosperity-Technologies/dp/0393239357" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> The Second Machine Age</a> (Brynjolfsson, Mcafee), <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0141033576" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Thinking, Fast and Slow</a> (Kahneman)</li> </ol>

Anna Raytcheva on Trading Regime Changes, Reflation and Crypto

Over her 22 years at Citi Group, Anna Raytcheva managed complex trading risks through volatility regimes both high and low. The Orange County blowup on the back of Greenspan’s surprise tightening campaign in 1994 provided Anna with an early lesson on the vulnerabilities that arise from owning exotic securities, especially when they are positioned with leverage. My conversation with Anna considers this and other prominent periods of market disruption and what they taught her about the limitations of modeling. With markets prone to risk on / risk off, Anna sought to develop trading signals using machine learning techniques to detect clues that a change in the vol regime was afoot.  Founding Sonya Capital in 2017, Anna capitalized on the perspective she gained trading through crisis periods when liquidity evaporated from markets.  As such, she constructs positions using global futures to implement a discretionary global macro strategy that takes economic data, policy changes and flows as inputs.  We finish our conversation with Anna's assessment of the movement to empower more women in the field of finance.  Noting that there's plenty of work still to do, she is optimistic on the opportunities for female advancement in the industry.  Please enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my discussion with Anna Raytcheva.

Over her 22 years at Citi Group, Anna Raytcheva managed complex trading risks through volatility regimes both high and low. The Orange County blowup on the back of Greenspan’s surprise tightening campaign in 1994 provided Anna with an early lesson on the vulnerabilities that arise from owning exotic securities, especially when they are positioned with leverage. My conversation with Anna considers this and other prominent periods of market disruption and what they taught her about the limitations of modeling. With markets prone to risk on / risk off, Anna sought to develop trading signals using machine learning techniques to detect clues that a change in the vol regime was afoot.  Founding Sonya Capital in 2017, Anna capitalized on the perspective she gained trading through crisis periods when liquidity evaporated from markets.  As such, she constructs positions using global futures to implement a discretionary global macro strategy that takes economic data, policy changes and flows as inputs.  We finish our conversation with Anna's assessment of the movement to empower more women in the field of finance.  Noting that there's plenty of work still to do, she is optimistic on the opportunities for female advancement in the industry.  Please enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my discussion with Anna Raytcheva.

Anna Raytcheva, Founder and CIO, Sonya Capital Management