WSJ's Take On the Week21 Sep 2025

Billionaire Investor Cliff Asness on Managing Market Risk and 'Buffer' ETFs

In this week's episode of WSJ’s Take On the Week, co-hosts Gunjan Banerji and Telis Demos talk to billionaire investor Cliff Asness, the co-founder and chief investment officer of AQR Capital Management. AQR is a global investment management firm known for quantitative investing, an approach that builds strategies based on data and research. Asness discusses one of the market's biggest trends: the explosion in popular ETFs designed to protect investors from downturns. But do they actually work?

Later, Asness shares why he thinks trading on Robinhood can feel more like betting on FanDuel, why the stock market has become less rational due to social media, and whether Palantir and Tesla are on the meme stock spectrum. Then, he weighs in on companies reporting earnings every six months, market froth and the bind facing the Federal Reserve.

This is WSJ’s Take On the Week where co-hosts Gunjan Banerji, lead writer for Live Markets, and Telis Demos, Heard on the Street’s banking and money columnist, cut through the noise and dive into markets, the economy and finance—the big trades, key players and business news ahead.

Have an idea for a future guest or episode? How can we better help you take on the week? We’d love to hear from you. Email the show at takeontheweek@wsj.com.

To watch the video version of this episode, visit our WSJ Podcasts YouTube channel or the video page of WSJ.com

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