Michael Contopoulos, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Richard Bernstein Advisors

With early exposure to Paul Tudor Jones and then stints on the sell-side in credit research, Michael Contopoulos is now Deputy CIO of Richard Bernstein Advisors, a macro-oriented asset manager overseeing roughly $20 billion across long-only portfolios. Our discussion centers on portfolio construction in an era of extreme equity concentration and shifting global leadership.

On the equity side, the firm is under-weight the most concentrated segments of U.S. equities and overweight international markets, citing valuation gaps, earnings acceleration abroad, and under-ownership by investors.

Using his background in quantitative credit strategy and a Merton framework for modeling  spread risk, Michael brings a structural lens to today’s corporate debt markets. Our conversation focuses on the surge in long-dated issuance tied to AI infrastructure build-outs. He argues that history rarely rewards lenders who finance capital-intensive growth booms at their peak.

Drawing parallels to late-1990s telecom boom, Michael questions whether investors are being adequately compensated for duration and technology risk embedded in 40- and 50-year debt issued by hyperscalers building data centers. The core concern is twofold: that AI-driven revenue gains may not justify the scale of investment, and that infrastructure built today may not remain technologically relevant decades from now.

I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Michael Contopoulos.

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠)