At the Forefront Podcast

In this milestone episode, released as Forefront celebrates its 10th anniversary, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden presents a highlight reel from six years of At the Forefront. Drawing on clips from guests across the show’s history, Sam traces how conversations on AI, digital assets, market structure and marketing have moved from early predictions to the practical work of turning innovation into operational frameworks and workflows.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by George Rosenberger, Americas Regional Committee Co-Chair at the FIX Trading Community and SVP, General Manager of NYFIX at Broadridge, ahead of FIX’s Americas Trading Conference in New York on October 29. George previews a program built around a practical question: how market structure changes actually get implemented across the systems and workflows of the buy side, sell side, exchanges, technology providers and regulators.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by Jeff Bell, Co-Founder of Eventus, which provides at-scale trade surveillance software across all lines of defense through its Validus platform. Jeff traces Eventus' practitioner-led roots back to his own years on the sell side, where seeing trade surveillance rules implemented and enforced firsthand shaped a founding philosophy built around speaking clients' language and understanding not just the letter of a regulation, but its underlying intent.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by Andrew Lekas, Partner at Old Mission, a global multi-asset market maker. Andrew traces the firm's evolution from a niche ETF and cross-border arbitrage shop into a business spanning futures, options, fixed income, currencies and crypto, and the two dig into what actually drives a market maker's decision to expand into a new asset class or venue.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden is joined by Chris Hurley, Senior Vice President and Director of Institutional Sales at CAPIS, and Jeff Hooks, Senior Vice President of Relationship Management and Client Experience at STP Investment Services. CAPIS provides outsourced and supplemental trading services across global equities, fixed income and derivatives; STP offers technology-enabled investment operations, fund administration and compliance solutions. Together, they discuss why emerging managers are increasingly outsourcing execution and operations rather than building that infrastructure in-house.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Jim Toes, President and CEO of the Security Traders Association (STA), ahead of the organization's 93rd annual Market Structure Conference this October in Washington, D.C. Jim shares what's shaping this year's event, themed "The Future in Focus," and how STA's grassroots roots continue to drive its mission of education, advocacy and community.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with David Choate, Chief Operating Officer at CAPIS, to discuss the long-term implications of passive investing on public markets, capital formation and price discovery. Building on several recent op-eds published in Institutional Investor and Traders Magazine, Dave shares his perspective on how passive investing, tax policy and market structure changes are reshaping the role of active management across the financial ecosystem.

In this episode, Forefront Managing Partner Mark Dowd sits down with Ben Wood of InfoPro Digital (publisher of Risk.net, WatersTechnology and Chartis Research) to explore how the financial publishing and events landscape is evolving alongside broader changes across capital markets.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Rashad Kurbanov, CEO of Corastone. Together, they explore the operational and infrastructure challenges surrounding the rapid growth of private markets, with a focus on scalability, investor access, distributed ledger technology and the future of private market infrastructure.

In this episode, Forefront Head of Content Sam Belden sits down with Ian McIntyre, Managing Director and Global Head of Market Data at Pico. Together, they explore how evolving market structure and shifting client demands are reshaping trading infrastructure, with a focus on low latency technology, cross-asset expansion and the role of Pico’s Redline platform.