Waters Wavelength

This week’s guest is David Bholat, director for professional and financial services at Faculty. (0:00) – Shen talks about her recent trip to Vietnam (8:00) – David joins the podcast (10:30) – Pilot purgatory (15:30) – Focus on the integration quality (20:30) – Steps for successful production (25:00) – The right case may not be the sexiest (28:00) – What exactly are agents (35:00) – David’s hope for the future of financial services

It’s just Tony and Shen this week. They discuss Tony’s latest feature about vibe coding. https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953113/vibe-coding-is-burning-us-out

This week’s guest is Cat Turley, CEO and founder of ExeQution Analytics. She joins the podcast to discuss the gap between investment data and trading alpha. (0:00) – Shen has a cold (5:30) – Cat joins the podcast (9:00) – Challenges in getting context from data (14:30) – Techs vs. traders vs. quants (18:30) – Minimizing day-to-day friction (22:00) – Macro and micro (28:30) – Measuring ROI (34:00) – Putting a process in place (36:00) – AI’s role

Tony catches Shen up on all the stories WatersTechnology published while she was on vacation. Stories mentioned: https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953074/symphony-introduces-agentic-workflows-to-core-platform https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953080/factsets-vectorization-service-aims-to-improve-agent-accuracy https://www.waterstechnology.com/regulation/7953083/ai-governance-rules-coming-soon-says-cftc-chair https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953077/bootcamps-and-peer-pressure-goldman-preps-staff-for-ai-future https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/7953000/genai-and-data-quality-converge-at-t-rowe-prices-data-lake-como?ref=header-search https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953079/defi-and-tradfi-firms-are-borrowing-each-others-benefits https://www.waterstechnology.com/regulation/7953050/hitting-the-great-wall-details-scarce-on-chinas-xinchuang-initiative

This week, Spencer Lee, head of products, Americas, and Julien Alexandre, global head of research at MarketAxess, join the podcast to discuss AI in fixed income trading. https://www.waterstechnology.com/market-access/technology/7950305/waters-wavelength-podcast-fixed-income-execution-innovation?ref=search https://www.marketaxess.com/explore/the-state-of-ai-survey-findings (0:00) – Tony recounts the NFL draft week (8:00) – Spencer and Julien join the podcast (11:30) – How AI is making sense of data coming from different sources (17:30) – Evolution of AI in fixed income (22:00) – Where AI has the most measurable impact (24:30) – How to trade and what to trade (30:00) – Agentic vs algo (33:30) – AI sentiment index

This week, Wei-Shen and Tony talk about a new AI study. (0:00) – Tony rambles on about crazy Uber fares (6:00) – Then, they discuss a recent AI study done by PwC.

This week, Wei-Shen chats with Rebecca Natale, EMEA editor for WatersTechnology, about Reb’s recent trip to the Netherlands, and the latest on the Cusip legal drama. (0:00) – Reb is thrilled to be on this episode. She talks about her little adventure to Amsterdam in the Netherlands (9:30) – Then, they chat discuss the past four years of legal drama with Cusip Global Services, and the difference between use and issuance of Cusip identifiers (14:00) – The latest court case CGS has been hit with https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/7952899/where-have-four-years-of-cusip-legal-drama-gone?ref=search https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/7952806/plaintiffs-propose-to-represent-all-non-database-cusip-licensees-in-last-7-years?ref=search

This week, Anthony chats with Nyela Graham, senior reporter for WatersTechnology, who subs in for Wei-Shen to talk about the hot topics at FIA Boca. 0:00 – Tony and Nyela have a rant about Chatham House rules. 15:30 – Nyela recaps FIA Boca—everything from prediction markets to tokenization to 24/7 trading to exchange CEOs having a tiff. 36:30 – And of course, no podcast with Nyela and Tony would be complete without a little baseball talk (in this case, the World Baseball Classic).  For more detail into what went down at FIA Boca, this article is in front of our paywall: https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952984/florida-and-folly-boca-attendees-forecast-the-future-of-market-structure

This week, Brennan Carley, who has spent more than 40 years working in financial technology, joins to discuss the hidden risks and untapped potential of agentic AI in the capital markets. 0:00 – Tony and Wei-Shen discuss boxing, MMA, and why our dreams of becoming professional fighters were dashed. 10:15 – Brennan joins the podcast 13:15 – An examination of AI’s evolution in the capital markets 20:30 – AI isn’t evolving as rapidly as it seems 26:30 – Are the old-guard software providers on Wall Street in trouble? 29:15 – How bank CEOs are looking at AI? 32:15 – How are the data providers looking at AI versus the trading technology business line? 37:45 – Will the fight over data exclusivity continue to ramp up? 43:45 – What are the hidden blind spots for firms of all stripes? 50:45 – A specific recommendation for FactSet and Refinitiv/LSEG Data & Analytics 54:30 – Brennan believes that there’s reason to believe that entry-level job won’t completely disappear; they’ll just change

This week’s guest is Andrew Morgan, president and chief revenue officer at TS Imagine. He talks with Wei-Shen about how fixed income trading behavior is changing. (0:00) – Tony’s side hustle (7:00) – Andrew joins the podcast and gives an overview of his background (13:00) – Changing fixed income trading behaviors (15:30) – Three main ingredients for electronic trading (24:30) – Data issues (31:30) – Equities markets run on agentic AI (34:00) – What hinders further electronification

On September 11, 2001, Katie McGarry Noack had just arrived at the World Trade Center’s Windows on the World. She was attending Waters’ first-ever conference. Of the thousands who lost their lives on that day, Katie was one, along with 70 other delegates who had arrived to catch the morning presentations or settle in before participating in panel discussions later in the day. Patrick McGarry is Katie’s brother. For the 25th anniversary of that fateful day, he wanted to do something special to remember his sister: on March 8th, he will hop on his bicycle in San Diego, California, and begin a 3,000-mile journey across the US, ending in St. Augustine, Florida, on April 20th. The goal of his Pacific-to-Atlantic journey is to raise $100,000 to benefit the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which provides mortgage-free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children. We hope you listen to his story. If you’d like to donate, you can find all the information you’ll need here: https://www.aridetoremember2026.com/ (6:15) – Patrick McGarry joins the podcast. (7:30) – He talks about what his 3,000-mile ride will entail. (11:15) – Patrick discusses Katie’s story and why he decided to do something so daunting to remember her. (18:45) – Why did he choose the Tunnel to Towers Foundation? (26:45) – An examination of how people handle grief differently. (31:15) – How important was it for him to have his family’s backing on this endeavor? (33:45) – Details on how to connect with Patrick.

A little late, but a very Happy New Year from your favorite podcast hosts! This week, Tony and Shen discuss topics they think capital markets firms will focus on this year—AI and agentic AI, quantum computing, and—you guessed it—market data.

This week’s guest is Jason Birmingham, CTO and head of global engineering at Broadridge (0:00) – Tony and Shen reminisce on an amazing snowman they built (7:00) – Jason joins the podcast and explains the “modern CTO mandate” (14:30) – The fundamentals matter (16:00) – A platform strategy (20:30) – Solving the ontology (26:00) – The blueprint (31:00) – Necessary skillsets

This week’s guest is Sophie Lagouanelle, vice president of product for financial crime compliance at LexisNexis Risk Solutions (0:00) – Tony and Shen talk about their Spotify 2025 Wrapped (5:00) – Sophie joins and reflects on the state of financial crime (14:00) – Volume and speed (17:30) – AI and ML’s role (25:30) – Changes within compliance teams (30:00) – Focus areas for regulators (40:30) – Shared memory

This week’s guests are Michele Pitts, managing director and global product head of transaction management, and Marcello Topa, director for global market advocacy, policy, and strategy at Citi Investor Services 0:00 – Reb and Shen talk about the death of rom-com movies 9:30 – Michele and Marcello join the podcast 11:30 – Updates from UK and EU’s taskforces 15:30 – Applicability of lessons from US T+1 19:00 – How tech can help 25:00 – Prevention vs. cure 30:00 – Metrics firms should have 32:30 – T+0 is inevitable

The week of Thanksgiving in the US is one of the slowest news weeks of the year. So Anthony and Nyela Graham (who is subbing in for Wei-Shen) talk about the news media, instead.

This week’s guest is Jan Rohof, Asia-Pacific director of quantitative strategies and solutions at Northern Trust Asset Management https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952654/northern-trust-asset-management-enlists-network-theory-to-construct-alpha-signals?ref=header-search 0:00 – Tony and Shen delve into two documentaries he recently watched 11:00 – Jan joins and talks about how he built a multi-factor model in high school 17:30 – The four Vs of data 20:30 – Efforts and resources required for good data infrastructure 26:30 – Focus on the economic fundamentals and reasoning 30:00 – NTAM’s research to implementation process 40:30 – Alternative data should be a misnomer

For the first 9 minutes, Tony rambles on about US elections…naturally. The good stuff starts at 9:30, when Mike McGovern, global head of technology engagement at Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), joins the show. Over the course of 30 minutes, Mike and Tony talk about the importance of building an open architecture so as to better position the organization for “innovation enablement” (11:00); lessons learned and mistakes made when experimenting with AI and the importance of structured data (15:00); they delve into some of the reasons for why data management is still such a challenge (20:00); Mike opines as to whether newer, more sophisticated forms of AI will help fix those old data management problems or compound those issues (25:00); does he have any worries about the younger generation relying too much on AI (28:00); how delves into how his ideas around strategic partnerships have changed over the years (33:00); and some words of wisdom for vendors approaching BBH (37:00).

Bob Myers runs Interop.io’s io.Intelligence unit. He joins the podcast (7:30) to explain what agentic AI really means (16:00); how the promise of agents could be good for interoperability between applications and systems (21:00); the hype versus reality of AI at financial institutions (25:00); an explainer of the Model Context Protocol and the need to avoid sins of the past (31:00); and what the industry should keep in mind when it comes to AI’s rapid evolution and the need to keep interoperability in mind (37:00). [Editor’s note: Tony confused ChartIQ with Glue42 when describing the former’s origins being in Charlottesville, Virginia. He’s not the brightest crayon in the box…give him a break.]

Over the last few weeks, the CEOs of several major financial institutions, as well as regulators around the globe, have been talking about tokenization, stablecoins, and blockchain. Wei-Shen and Tony do their best to unpack why this is significant.

This week’s episode is one of those where Wei-Shen and Tony blather on about an array of things, including generative AI, cybersecurity, and Taylor Swift’s new album. Listen at your own risk.

This week, Bank of America’s Ashok Krishnan and Duncan McInnes join Tony to discuss the build, buy, borrow strategy and instilling the right culture within the bank. 0:00 – Shen and Tony talk about the Risk Live Asia 2025 conference in Singapore 7:30 – Ashok and Duncan join the podcast 11:30 – The build, buy, borrow strategy 14:00 – Building a rocket ship 19:00 – Instilling a culture that remains 22:30 – Doubling down on the ‘Why’ 28:00 – Managing tech priorities 34:00 – Dealing with data, interoperability, and tech debt

No guest this week, folks. Tony and Shen discuss recent books they’ve read about data and analytics, and…humanity.

This week’s guest is Val Wotton, global head of equity solutions at DTCC. He joins to discuss the necessary steps leading up to the T+1 transitions in the UK and EU. 0:00 – Reb and Shen talk about Reb’s time in upstate New York 6:00 – Val Wotton joins the podcast and discusses the metrics from US T+1 13:00 – Analyze the entire lifecycle and do your impact assessment! 18:30 – Considerations from Asia 22:00 – Additional costs to assess 28:30 – Balancing mandatory deliverables and T+1 work 34:00 – Tweaking CSDR rules 42:00 – Resiliency can’t be understated

This week’s guest is Bill Murphy, managing partner at Cresting Wave 0:00 – Tony and Shen discuss System of a Down and Gorillaz 6:00 – Bill Murphy, Blackstone’s former CTO, joins to discuss that much-discussed MIT study on AI projects failing and factors executives should consider as the technology continues to evolves

This week, Shen and Reb discuss a recent MIT study on GenAI pilots, and Reb’s recent story about ModuleQ dissolving. https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952681/fintech-powering-lseg%E2%80%99s-ai-alerts-dissolves

This week, Reb and Tony talk about the internet and the problems compounded by AI. https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952665/the-great-disappearing-internet%E2%80%94and-what-it-could-mean-for-your-llm 0:00 – Welcome to the team, Mya! You can reach her at [email protected] 7:00 – Reb and Tony discuss her recent column and the interconnected mess of a web of humans, internet, and AI

This week’s guest is Lior Yogev, CEO and co-founder at FundGuard. He joins the podcast to discuss legacy tech stacks at asset management firms. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about personalities 10:00 – Lior Yogev joins the podcast 12:30 – When does a tech stack become legacy? 19:00 – How asset managers modernize their platforms without excess downtime 22:30 – Migration times 26:30 – Total rebuild vs. slight tweaks

This week’s guest is Mo Rahim, group chief data officer at Standard Chartered, who joins the podcast to discuss data and AI governance and guardrails for AI. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about recent shows they’ve watched 9:00 – Mo Rahim joins the podcast 13:30 – Understand your core identity 17:00 – People and literacy 19:00 – Get your data right 25:00 – Standard Chartered’s research, partnerships, and innovation pillar 29:00 – Building AI in a safe and responsible way 32:30 – AI is your plus one

This week’s guest is Nick Kolba, CEO and co-founder of Connectifi, who joins the podcast to discuss the Model Context Protocol, LLMs and agentic AI. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about Astronomer’s ad campaign 5:30 – Nick Kolba joins the podcast 8:00 – Step changes or big jumps in tech 18:00 – Excitement for the Model Context Protocol 21:00 – Parallels between FDC3 and MCP 24:30 – Concerns around security 30:00 – Work that still needs to be done 41:00 – Code generation for “senior engineers”

This week’s guest is Brian Bejile, cofounder & CEO, Octaura 0:00-7:20: Anthony Malakian and Rebecca Natale, Europe Editor for WatersTechnology, complain for seven minutes about poor customer service and artificial intelligence. 7:20-35:23: Brian Bejile and Nyela Graham, senior reporter at WatersTechnology, have an actual informative discussion—as opposed to Tony and Reb’s diatribes—about the origins of Octaura, modernization of the credit markets, the platform provider’s move into the collateralized loan obligation (CLO) space, and the need for more data and analytics on the buy side.

This week, Reb and Nyela discuss BNY’s digital workers and what the use of AI in society signals for the future.

This week, Riad Chowdhury, head of Asia-Pacific, and Dan Burke, global head of emerging markets at MarketAxess, join to discuss block trading in fixed income. Plus Reb discusses her recent article about Cusip and updates on the class action lawsuit moving through the courts. 00:00 Reb and Tony discuss recent reporting around Cusip and updates on the class action lawsuit 12:30 Riad Chowdhury, head of Asia-Pacific, and Dan Burke, global head of emerging markets at MarketAxess, join the podcast 14:40 Block trading in fixed income vs. equities 20:20 Drivers for larger-sized trades 23:00 MarketAxess’s Targeted RFQ 31:00 Challenges for dealers 33:00 Learnings from the equities world 39:00 Trends in bid/ask spreads for EM hard-currency debt 44:20 AI model for Targeted RFQ

This week, Reb, Nyela, and Shen discuss concerns around air travel and notable cybersecurity incidents. https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952488/agentic-ai-takes-center-stage-bank-tech-projects-new-funding-rounds-and-more?cx_artPos=1&cx_testId=4&cx_testVariant=cx_1#cxrecs_s 0:00 – Reb, Nyela, and Shen talk about Reb’s flight back from New York 10:30 – They discuss two stories from our last Waters Cooler about the previous hacks on the SEC’s Edgar database and Ion

This week, Par Cassells joins Nyela to discuss shorter settlement cycles and the role of vendors in the transition. 0:00 – Tony and Nyela talk highlights from the Tech & Data in Financial Markets (TDFM) conference 7:00 – Par Cassells, chief client officer at AccessFintech, joins Nyela on the podcast 9:00 – Par’s takeaways from North America’s move to T+1 13:00 – The upcoming moves to T+1 in the EU and UK 17:00 – T+0 margin vs. T+0 settlement 20:30 – Difference between the transitions 24:00 – Vendors’ role in the T+1 transition

This week, Tradeweb’s Chris Bruner joins the podcast to discuss digital assets and fixed income. 0:00 – Reb is back in NYC! 6:30 – Chris Bruner, chief product officer at Tradeweb, joins Nyela on the podcast 13:30 – Tradeweb’s history with blockchain 18:40 – Gauging client reception to digital assets 28:50 – Upcoming regulatory headwinds

Tony and Shen discuss Bloomberg’s addition to IB chat, common threads in our Voice of the CTO series, and op resiliency. Our Bloomberg story: https://www.waterstechnology.com/data-management/7952434/bloomberg%E2%80%99s-chatbots-streamline-external-data-sharing-otc-trading Our Voice of the CTO series: https://www.waterstechnology.com/topics/voice-of-the-cto

This week, Hamilton Lane's Griff Norville joins to discuss how the asset manager is tackling private markets data. 0:00 – Eliot joins Tony on the podcast 3:10 – Griff Norville, head of technology solutions at Hamilton Lane, joins the podcast 4:40 – Private markets data extraction 6:10 – Data storage issues 8:40 – Tackling standardization 11:00 – The dual role of being an asset manager and a data provider 15:40 – Are attitudes changing around this data? 20:00 – The expanding tech landscape

This week, Bitdefender’s Adrian Coleșa and Transilvania Quantum’s Sorin Boloș join to discuss security vulnerabilities in quantum computing 0:00 – Tony is back! 3:30 – Adrian Coleșa, Senior Security Researcher at Bitdefender, and Sorin Boloș, quantum software engineer at Transilvania Quantum, join the podcast 8:00 – How the partnership between Bitdefender and Transilvania Quantum began 12:00 – Research into QC as a potential target 14:00 – Why attack a QC 19:30 – Who bears the onus 23:30 – Classical and QC vulnerabilities 32:30 – What is a quantum antivirus

This week, Toby Glaysher, chairman at Finbourne Technology, joins the podcast to discuss the asset servicing industry. 0:00 – Reb and Shen rant about using ChatGPT for academic projects 12:00 – Toby Glaysher from Finbourne joins the podcast and gives an overview of his 36 years of experience in the asset servicing business 16:30 – Fund accounting is a good introduction to the investment lifecycle 19:00 – A potential zero fund accountant environment 23:00 – The impact tariffs have on asset servicing firms 27:30 – The potential solution 30:30 – There are too many participants 35:30 – 95% of the work is in executing 39:30 – Reducing the cost of investing

This week, Reb, Nyela, and Shen talk about unimaginative company names and then address some challenges in the loans market. 0:00 – Reb goes on a rant about company names 9:00 – They discuss the challenges in the loans market 14:00 – Identifiers are so esoteric

Bertie Haskins, executive director and head of data for Apac and Middle East at Capco, joins to discuss the challenges of commercializing data. 0:00 – Reb and Shen discuss Reb’s potential as the next host 3:00 – Bertie Haskins from Capco joins the podcast 5:30 – Four key areas around commercializing data 12:30 – Is the problem with how firms define the CDO role 16:00 – Strategies to commercialize data 19:30 – Understanding the data roadmap 24:00 – Steps to create new data products 26:30 – Sometimes, a simple option might be the best

This week, Jon Hodges, head of trading and asset services for Apac at FIS Global, joins the podcast to talk about how firms in Asia-Pacific approach AI and data. 0:00 – Tony and Shen talk about having faith in humanity 9:30 – Jon Hodges, head of trading and asset services for Apac at FIS Global, joins and gives an overview of how he started his career in a structured credit hedge fund 13:00 – Lessons for start-ups 17:00 – Observations from tariffs 21:30 – How Asia-Pacific firms are ahead in adopting AI 24:00 – Data’s importance 27:30 – Snowflake’s dominance in the capital markets 29:00 – Asia vs. US and Europe 31:30 – FIS is investing more in AI

Tony, Reb, and Nyela talk about tariffs (not really), journalism (sorta), and pop culture (mostly).

Brian Hyndman, CEO and president at Blue Ocean Technologies, joins to discuss overnight trading 0:00 – Nyela and Reb talk about Reb’s start at WatersTechnology 5:00 – Brian joins the podcast and walks through his background and the beginnings of Blue Ocean ATS 8:00 – How market data works for BOATS 9:00 – Obstacles for exchanges entering the overnight space 15:00 – Moving to MEMX Technologies’ platform 17:00 – Competition from other ATSs 20:00 – The growth of real-time information and its impact on trading 21:00 – Misunderstandings about overnight trading 22:30 – Roadmap for 2025

This week, SigTech’s CEO Bin Ren joins Eliot to discuss GenAI’s progress since ChatGPT’s emergence in 2022, agentic AI, and challenges with regulating AI. 0:00 – Wei-Shen and Tony discuss their bar trivia adventures 5:30 – Bin Ren, CEO of SigTech, joins Eliot on the podcast 7:00 – Agentic AI 10:30 – Next steps in GenAI 15:00 – Is AI impossible to regulate? 23:30 – The understanding gap between tech and finance teams

This week, Tony and Nyela discuss Nyela's week spent in Boca Raton, Florida covering the FIA Boca conference as well as the current developments around 24/7 trading in US equity markets. 0:00- Tony and Nyela discuss the beginning of baseball season in the United States 3:25- They discuss what happened last week at FIA Boca

Caesar, who previously spent 15 years at Google, joins to discuss Arta’s goal of putting a private banker in everyone’s pockets. 0:00 – Reb and Shen talk about cat punches and Reb’s profile on CME’s Terry Duffy https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-tech/7952311/exclusive-terry-duffy-on-cmes-cloud-future-takeover-targets-and-candy 7:00 – Caesar Sengupta, co-founder and CEO of Arta Finance, joins Wei-Shen on the podcast 10:00 – Big Tech’s challenges in trying to get deep into finance and the capital markets 19:30 – Why it’s hard for traditional finance players to create new user experiences 22:00 – Arta’s use of AI and application of agentic AI 28:00 – How Arta is different from robo advisors 30:30 – Partnerships with banks 32:30 – Arta’s focus in the next few months 34:00 – Google connections

This week, Tony and Nyela discuss FactSet’s recent acquisition of LiquidityBook and what it could signal for trading technology. https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-tech/7952274/factset-liquiditybook-the-buy-side-oms-space-continues-to-shrink 0:00 – Tony and Nyela discuss the year's Best Picture Oscar winner 3:30 – They discuss the evolution of the OMS space

Reb is back on the podcast to talk about her trip to Reykjavik, as well as two market data reports released this month. 0:00 – Reb talks about her travels to Iceland 14: 00 – They discuss market data fees