Michael Contopoulos, Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Richard Bernstein Advisors

About this episode

Michael Contopoulos discusses portfolio construction and investment risks in the context of AI infrastructure and corporate debt markets.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Dean Curnutt

Guest: Michael Contopoulos

Topics covered

• portfolio construction
• equity concentration
• global leadership
• corporate debt markets
• AI infrastructure
• investment risks

Keywords

• portfolio construction
• equity concentration
• corporate debt
• AI infrastructure
• investment risks
• long-dated issuance
• valuation gaps

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Richard Bernstein Advisors, U.S. equities, AI, telecom, hyperscalers

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