We caught up with Avisha Thakkar, Senior Director for Fixed Income Research, to talk about how her research fits into the investment process, what led her to a career in the fixed income and macro research space and how she approaches her role.

Q: What do you do at Schonfeld?

A: I oversee the centralized research effort in the Discretionary Macro and Fixed Income (DMFI) business within Schonfeld. My work combines fundamental macro research with forecasting central bank reaction functions in developed market economies, producing both timely commentary and deeper thematic insights on economic data, fiscal and monetary policy and interest rates.

The objective is to give risk-takers an honest, unbiased framing of the macro cycle — not tied to any one portfolio’s positioning — so they can see both the slow-moving structural forces shaping the backdrop and the shorter-term events that can shift the path.

Q: What led you to a career in fixed income and macro research?  

A: My path really started at home. My parents are small business owners, and as a kid I spent weekends in my dad’s dollar stores, where he was a small importer. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it at the time, but I saw firsthand how things like inflation, the business cycle, policy changes or labor shortages showed up in his bottom line every single day.

Those forces, happening miles away, would become dinner table conversations. That experience sparked my interest in asking big questions and trying to piece things together when the information is imperfect—exactly what macro and fixed income research is about.

Q:  How did you start your career? 

A: I went to NYU and studied finance and statistics, which led me to an internship at Goldman Sachs in U.S. economics research. I stayed at Goldman for about seven years, in U.S. economics research and then global interest rates research. I loved my experience and feel really lucky to have grown my career there.

What I took from that experience was how to take a flood of narratives, data points and catalysts and distill them down into clear, tradeable insights for risk-takers. That ability to filter, synthesize and get to the essence of what matters has really shaped how I approach research here.

Q: How would you compare your previous role on the sell-side versus at Schonfeld? 

A: While I was in a similar research role, it skewed a bit more academic and focused on modal views. You were reaching a broader set of clients, and you needed to be able to offer a bit of everything to everyone. For example, having a long structural view on a cycle and interest rates was just as important as a tactical view on the data and near-term catalyst path.

Shifting to the buy-side has been a magnification of these things, but even more, it’s about framing markets through the lens of probability distributions, seeking asymmetric opportunities that our fundamental research and data analytics reveal.

You can be very right about the state of the world that you expect, but the markets can price something very different around that, and you really need to think about tails. That is a really exciting and challenging part of the process, because it’s less about being right or wrong, but being able to navigate risks and understand catalysts.

Q: How does your research fit into Schonfeld’s investment process?

A: I sit as a sort-of bridge between the flow of news and data and the risk-taking that happens across the platform. Where I fit into each PM’s process depends on what they need. Sometimes it’s helping shape views and forecasts around upcoming data, understanding where consensus might be and where our views may differ based on our own fundamental analysis.

Other times, it’s closer to the investment process, like identifying opportunities in Japan based on my read of the cyclical picture and the catalyst calendar.

Q: What do you find most exciting?

A: There’s always this tension between the structural and the cyclical in our analysis of the economy and markets. On one hand, you have the deep, slow-moving forces — debt dynamics, demographic shifts, productivity trends — the stuff that shapes the backdrop for years, even decades. On the other hand, you’ve got to be ready to pivot on a dime for fast-moving events — a central bank surprise, a sudden fiscal shift, a geopolitical shock.

That blend of long-term framing and short-term tactical positioning is what makes this job so stimulating. You’re never just in ‘big picture’ mode, and you’re never just chasing headlines — you’re constantly integrating both into something PMs can use.

In the past year, I’ve particularly valued the growing exchange with equity and credit investment professionals here. It’s truly a two-way conversation – I’m constantly learning from our equity PMs about what their companies are signaling on the macro front and how different policy shifts are playing out across sectors.

The more we work together the clearer the big picture is. I can add some of the macro context they may not see, and by the same token, their company and sector level insights help inform things in my world. The more we connect the dots, the more effective we are.