| The S&P 500 swung higher for the second straight week, and the US unemployment rate has hit a 53-year low. But some of the most prominent hedge fund managers are sounding the alarm: More than a decade of easy money could lead to an unruly unwind. "Anybody who's basically under the age of 40 hasn't really been investing professionally in a bear market," Jim Chanos, the short seller and founder of Kynikos Associates, told me this week on the sidelines of the Global Alts 2023 conference in Miami. Chanos says the unwinding of fraudulent behavior in markets tends to lag behind financial cycles, and so investors are likely to get more discerning about lending and investing with clients whose businesses are suspect or incomplete. Yet his main concern ahead is that companies are minting profit margins 50% higher than what's normal—and that market prices are still too lofty. Paul Singer, in a private event hosted by the Managed Funds Association in Miami, told investors he expects disorder as the markets unravel. He thinks valuations are higher than they were during the dot-com bubble or even in 1929. Nassim Taleb, author of the The Black Swan and adviser to tail-risk hedge fund firm Universa Investments, told me in an interview this week that tumors are pervasive across the market, including in crypto, real estate and cash-burning companies that are still limping along. "Things won't be fine for a while," he said. "We have the weirdest valuations in history." A day earlier, Universa's Mark Spitznagel went so far as to call the market a "tinderbox-timebomb" that may wreak havoc that rivals the Great Depression given how long and how much the Federal Reserve was propping it up. There's a strange air of excitement when it comes to many of these money managers. Often, these funds profit when markets get choppier or even go south. (Singer's Elliott Investment Management just raised $13 billion last year, the most in its history, in anticipation of new opportunities.) We could see a big resurgence of the activist investors, tail-risk funds and short sellers that had become extraordinarily unpopular in the pandemic-fueled meme-stock craze. Bridgewater's New Era  Karen Karniol-Tambour Courtesy Bridgewater Associates Now that Ray Dalio has ceded control, Bridgewater Associates' newest leaders are looking to make their mark on the firm. One big change: Karen Karniol-Tambour becomes the first woman to rise to the most senior investing rank at the world's largest hedge fund firm—at the age of 37. The move has been "16 years in the making," she told me in her first interview upon being named co-chief investment officer alongside Bob Prince and Greg Jensen, who recruited Karniol-Tambour when she was still a senior at Princeton University. You can find her interview here, where she expands on the investing environment and her concerns about the choppiness ahead. Asset management has long lacked women in the top ranks, and hedge fund firms are notoriously male dominated, making Karniol-Tambour's ascent all the more notable. Other women moving up in the industry include Katie Koch, who was recently tapped to lead TCW Group, and Mala Gaonkar, who started a new firm, in the largest debut of a woman-led hedge fund in the industry's history. Divya Nettimi also recently kicked off a billion-dollar hedge fund. A page seems to be turning. Who's News Harvey Schwartz, who used to be president of Goldman Sachs, is a top contender for CEO at Carlyle Group Inc. ... Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, spoke in his first live interview since leaving the crypto exchange and starting his own firm. ... Luke Sarsfield, who was tapped to help run the $1.7 trillion asset management division at Goldman, is leaving after being moved out of the firm's leadership ranks. ... Michael Platt's highly leveraged fortune has ballooned to $11 billion. ... Blackstone is shifting leadership at a key business, making Wesley LePatner the head of the "Core+" real estate unit, while Frank Cohen cedes leadership of that unit while remaining chairman and CEO of BREIT, which hit a monthly redemption limit in January. Here are the changes among Blackstone's ranks as reported by Bloomberg's Dawn Lim. —Sonali Basak, Bloomberg News | 
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