Someday within the early Seventies, a younger Rick Rieder sat in his elementary college cafeteria, not consuming. As an alternative, he stared at his lunch cash—1 / 4—and weighed the likelihood of an Oakland Raiders victory. He would obsess over microdata, like how the soccer crew performed on turf versus grass, trying to find a marginal edge that will flip his 25 cents into 50. Then, he’d wager. When he misplaced, he went hungry, he advised podcaster and creator William Inexperienced.
That starvation by no means actually went away. He advised Inexperienced he “will get grumpy throughout bull markets,” and prefers when the market loses its nerve. Now chief funding officer for fastened earnings at BlackRock, Rieder has what he admits is a “maniacal” obsession with information that helps him to select by way of the wreckage, discover the arbitrage, or get out early. “The entire gig,” he mentioned, is managing danger nicely sufficient to know when it’s time to go away.
Within the final week, Rieder has surged on prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, overtaking institutional favorites just like the “Two Kevins” (Hassett and Warsh) to develop into a number one contender to switch Jerome Powell as the following chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
His profession has been a masterclass in institutional survival. In July 1987, a 25-year-old Rieder joined former brokerage E.F. Hutton simply months earlier than “Black Monday” despatched the markets plunging 22% in a single day, forcing the 80-year-old agency right into a fire-sale merger with Lehman Brothers. He survived the transition—by his personal telling, attributable to a “fortunate” sudden opening—and spent almost 20 years at Lehman.
He departed in Might 2008, narrowly earlier than Lehman collapsed into the most important chapter in U.S. historical past, to discovered his personal agency, R3 Capital. When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink acquired R3 a yr later, he put in Rieder on the helm of what would develop into the most important funding platform on the planet, making him a “tremendous investor” managing $2.3 trillion {dollars} in international bond markets, a sum bigger than the annual GDP of most nations on the planet.
By the implosions of those two august establishments, Rieder by no means misplaced his cool, former colleagues say. Josh Tarnow, a former BlackRock Managing Director who adopted Rieder from Lehman to BlackRock and has watched him “every day in battle” for 3 a long time, attested to Rieder’s means to hone in when it mattered.
“He is excellent at accessing his sources, and he’s extremely calm,” Tarnow advised Fortune.
That temperament is why Tarnow and different longtime colleagues describe Rieder as “made for” what would be the riskiest job on the planet: managing the U.S. economic system.
His momentum on Polymarket has shocked the financial institution. Rieder hasn’t labored on the Fed earlier than, in contrast to the opposite principal contenders. Stephen Moore, a former advisor to President Donald Trump, telling Fortune the candidacy a “curveball.” He added he didn’t know a lot concerning the Wall Avenue candidate.
“I ought to in all probability be learning up on him,” he mentioned.
However those that have watched Rieder since his early days at Lehman are much less shocked. A number of of his outdated colleagues advised Fortune that the Fed is a pure subsequent problem for a person who “lives for the markets.”
“Particularly during the last 5 years—and perhaps during the last 10, 20 years—there’s been an argument out there that the Fed tends to be late, and that they don’t like wanting ahead,” a former colleague who labored with Rieder at BlackRock, mentioned. “And so I feel Rick will do an important job bridging the hole between a forward-looking method—every thing about his job right this moment is to look ahead and venture and make investments for the long run—versus wanting backwards.”
Inexperienced, having interviewed Rieder years in the past, mentioned he was shocked that markets underestimated the bond dealer for thus lengthy. He matches Trump’s mannequin of “central casting”–hiring individuals who look the half–extrodinarily nicely, he mentioned.
“There’s one thing a couple of highly effective man, with some huge cash beneath his management who’s so clearly a winner, I feel could be very seductive to [the President],” Inexperienced mentioned.
From educational probation to star scholar
Rieder’s arc, on reflection, might look inevitable. It wasn’t. Earlier than he was managing crises for others, he needed to work his means out of his personal. In highschool, Rieder was not only a “mediocre” scholar, however what he describes as fully “motivationally challenged” and “directionless,” he advised podcaster Jon Schultz. Whereas he struggled with liberal arts topics like historical past, English literature, and philosophy, which “didn’t sink in,” he did show a particular aptitude: he excelled in typing and accounting, discovering the latter logical and “intuitive,” he advised Inexperienced. Regardless of this spark, he admits he was a “health club rat” who spent most of his time hanging out and watching films moderately than learning.
The “catalyzing occasion,” as Rieder calls it, occurred whereas sitting on a rock, on a golf course behind his dad and mom’ home, in Scarsdale. After receiving a set of dismal grades throughout his freshman yr at Hobart School, which positioned him on “social and educational probation,” Rieder sat on that rock for 4 hours, terrified by the considered his father’s response. His father was an entrepreneur who ran an workplace merchandise firm known as American Unifax. Rieder had watched his father work relentlessly to maintain his typewriter ribbon and correction fluid enterprise alive, whilst pc expertise rendered the merchandise “rapidly antiquated” and put the household by way of robust occasions, he mentioned.
Paralyzed by that distinction together with his personal trajectory, Rieder realized he had gained weight, was ingesting an excessive amount of beer, and “going nowhere,” he advised Inexperienced. He credit his roommate for reinforcing the concept that they needed to “transfer on” from their way of life of watching films and hanging out within the health club. He overhauled his life, and the pair transferred from Hobart to Emory College. He discovered a curriculum that mirrored his inside wiring: enterprise. As soon as he started taking finance, advertising and marketing, and administration lessons, Rieder mentioned he felt “the ball begin rolling downhill”; he remodeled from being a near-dropout on probation to an award-winning finance scholar, in the end ending third in his class (although he notes in interviews that his spouse, whom he met at Emory, completed first).
A faith of the draw back
The ball rolled down the hill, and into the abyss of obsession. Rieder, it appears, does every thing at both 100% or at 0%.
At Wharton, the place he earned his MBA, Rieder remembers a visiting govt from the Golden Nugget on line casino explaining how casinos actually earn a living. Rieder raised his hand and mentioned it was as a result of the percentages favored the home. The manager corrected him. Casinos win, he mentioned, as a result of gamblers arrive with $200—and after they lose it, they’re compelled to go away. The home, in contrast, has infinite liquidity and time.
“And I believed, gosh, if you oscillate, you hit the down 200, you allow,” Rieder advised Inexperienced. “So nearly, statistically, you’re all the time going to hit the down 200 for those who keep there lengthy sufficient. It simply emblazoned in my thoughts the philosophy across the random stroll alongside of a development, and simply ensuring you’re being considerate about optimizing it versus being on the unsuitable facet of it.”
That realization, that survival is a matter of staying within the recreation lengthy sufficient to let the development play itself out, remodeled Rieder’s life. It wasn’t so simple as adopting a piece ethic. He engineered a way of life designed to stop ever hitting his personal “down 200” second, a state of being that his colleagues discover each spectacular and bewildering.
Rieder “doesn’t sleep,” Tarnow mentioned. Or moderately, he sleeps a most of 4 hours an evening. Colleagues mentioned you possibly can anticipate emails from him as early as 3 a.m. or as late as 11 p.m. Nonetheless early they got here to the workplace, Rieder was all the time earlier, and regardless of how late they stayed, Rieder stayed later, they mentioned.
“He’s the toughest employee within the room,” two former colleagues mentioned. His home in Florida is roofed with huge flat-screen TVs set to markets. He checks Apple’s earnings experiences on trip. And in the course of the Inexperienced interview, he even requested permission to execute a commerce as a result of he “can’t sit nonetheless” whereas the bond yield curve strikes. The hassle comes from a definite ardour, his colleagues mentioned, however Rieder has additionally mentioned it comes from an acute nervousness.
Rieder advised Inexperienced that he tracked his biometric information with the Whoop ring, and located that his stress ranges peaked at 11:30 p.m., the second he was compelled to disconnect and sleep regardless of Asian markets being open. They plummet at 3:45 a.m., the second he lastly will get to get up and seize his cellphone.
“I hate the sensation of not being in management whereas sleeping,” he advised Inexperienced. He solely relaxes as soon as he can see the markets shifting.
Buying and selling fastened earnings is a distinctly totally different recreation than buying and selling shares. Within the inventory market, merchants usually hunt for the upside, looking for the following large factor that they will trip to the moon. Bond merchants like Rieder, in contrast, are consistently staring down the cliff of what might go unsuitable. For Rieder, managing $2.7 trillion in fastened earnings means overseeing an enormous sea of debt that’s consistently beneath menace from inflation, rising rates of interest, and different geopolitical “exogenous” occasions. There are pressures and dangers you can not put together for, however you simply must learn to “make somewhat bit of cash lots of occasions,” one in all his former colleagues mentioned. The best way to win out over a long time—typically beating benchmark indexes—is simply to make sure that you’re all the time hedged sufficient, and have sufficient liquidity, to by no means hit the statistical “down 200” that forces you to go away.
How do you measure success in that form of recreation? Rieder has mentioned he doesn’t really feel profitable. “I nonetheless really feel like I’m going to get fired day by day,” he advised Inexperienced.
Who follows a bond dealer: 42 individuals
To the common individual, Rieder’s work type sounds loopy. However to fellow finance individuals, it’s magnetic. Since Lehman, Rieder has accrued a definite group of 42 individuals who adopted him from Lehman to B3 to BlackRock, endlessly loyal to their boss, as a result of they knew when push got here to shove, they’d by no means lose as a result of they didn’t attempt exhausting sufficient, his former colleagues mentioned.
“Rick was capable of finding an excellent stability between being super-competitive and really demanding, whereas additionally attempting to take nice care of the those that had been working alongside of him,” a colleague who labored with him at Lehman and BlackRock mentioned. He understands if individuals don’t share his similar way of life aspirations, and through significantly robust weekends, he was recognized to purchase new tech devices to share with the crew just like the Meta sun shades the place you may take heed to music whereas taking part in sports activities, a former colleague mentioned. One other colleague mentioned that after a tough yr early on in his profession, Rieder purchased him a “brightly coloured tie” as a enjoyable present.
He additionally, Tarnow mentioned, took time to assist his individuals when the corporate was transitioning; discovering the proper alternatives right here and there for others.
“This can be a man that’s all the time apprehensive about individuals greater than himself,” Tarnow mentioned.
Quiet energy
In the end, the fixed evaluation of what might go unsuitable has made Rieder a distinctly humble determine in an business typically outlined by ego. Each colleague and associate interviewed by Fortune used the phrase “humility” to explain him. In high-stakes environments, like conferences with highly effective CEOs or indignant shoppers, Rieder is named a listener moderately than a talker. “He holds the room as a result of he’s an excellent listener; he entertains totally different opinions,” Tarnow mentioned. “He’s a seeker of fact. This can be a man that’s doing one of the best he can to get to the reality.”
However even in lower-stakes environments, he has the identical perspective. He takes on a number of charitable endeavors.
Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, who leads Unusual Faculties, the Newark constitution college system that Rieder has invested in and sat on the board for 20 years, famous that most individuals on the college would by no means acknowledge how influential he’s within the international economic system due to how quietly he carries himself. “There’s a kindness and a gentleness to him that we get to see day by day within the work he does with us,” he advised Fortune. “He has an unimaginable sense of service and by no means takes credit score for something.”
Shawn Shivalkar, who co-founded a preferred various funding membership at Emory College beneath Rieder’s steering, remembers a equally disarming presence throughout their first assembly at BlackRock. Sitting in an workplace full of messy papers and large screens displaying markets shifting, Shivalkar discovered a person who was “tremendous engaged” however fully unpretentious.
“He simply had all his screens up, and he was simply asking us questions,” Shivalkar advised Fortune. “And he was bouncing a basketball up over his head, simply form of tossing it up within the air and catching it. It wasn’t like a, ‘Alright, I’m right here to trick you with a bunch of twisty questions’ form of assembly. It was a really productive and respectful dialogue.”
Can a market animal sit nonetheless?
What does this all imply when it comes to his health for Fed chairman? Nicely, for his colleagues, it appears apparent that he’s one of the best match for the function: “nobody’s going to care extra or have extra ardour for doing the job,” one former colleague mentioned. Nobody will outwork him, or have extra of a will to the reality.
However that assumes, in fact, that Rieder can keep motivated with out the fixed, short-term stress of the markets. One in every of his former colleagues was shocked that Rieder would need the function, given how staid the place is and the way he must survive the browbeating of politics for credibility as an alternative of working on his personal logic. Can a person who engineered in his organic hardwiring to be troubled when markets shut, whose mantra, based on his outdated colleagues, was that “it’s not about being proper, it’s about getting cash,” in the end ignore markets when needing to make a tricky rate of interest name, faux to not care how a lot cash is on the road together with his determination? The query issues particularly now, because the White Home has grown more and more delicate to market reactions and Trump has repeatedly criticized and threatened Fed Chair Powell for holding rates of interest excessive whilst traders pushed for reduction. Rieder’s personal politics are barely elusive. He donated and supported Senator Corey Booker (D-N.J.), however he has additionally donated half 1,000,000 to Republican PACs to help Trump’s presidency.
His former colleagues say they’d be shocked if Rieder threw away his function to develop into a easy loyalist. Tarnow mentioned the job would in the end “free” Rieder.
“I feel it’d be liberating for him, that his accountability isn’t to earn a living,” Tarnow mentioned. The information-obsessed Rieder might contemplate variables he hadn’t been in a position to earlier than, when he was simply centered on his fiduciary accountability. “His accountability set is to information the nation fiscally to a degree the place we’re at our greatest.”His mantra, based on former colleagues, is “work exhausting, play exhausting, give again.” Rieder advised Inexperienced he has indicators that say that throughout his home. Now, Tarnow says, he may get the final word alternative to offer again.
“This can be a man that desires this,” Tarnow mentioned.
