Episode 356: When software fails

Tony and Shen discuss Tony’s latest column and a New Yorker article by Jill Lepore. The conversation then shifts to our varied levels of exposure to technology. https://www.waterstechnology.com/regulation/7953315/ai-regulation-whos-responsible-for-eliminating-gray-areas

Shen and Nyela chat about their recent two-part feature on the budding GPU compute market. Then, Nyela gives an overview of what went down at Sibos 2026, held in Miami. https://www.waterstechnology.com/trading-tech/7953251/the-gpu-compute-index-race-begins https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953259/gpu-compute-derivatives-are-put-to-the-test

To start on a somber note, this Friday will mark the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. WatersTechnology was hosting its first-ever event at Windows on the World at the top of the North Tower. Click here to read our memorial article: https://www.waterstechnology.com/comment/7874671/911-the-colleagues-we-lost-and-the-years-that-followed This week’s guest is Chris Bruner, chief product officer at Tradeweb. (0:00) – Tony vents about a recent PR incident (13:00) – Chris joins the podcast and explains why Tradeweb got into the prediction markets game. [This is Chris’ second time on the show. Here is his previous episode: https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7952471/waters-wavelength-ep-320-tradeweb%E2%80%99s-chris-bruner] (17:00) – Why is it a necessity to incorporate this data onto the Tradeweb platform, rather than the customer going directly to the prediction markets provider? (19:00) – How is this data different than sentiment data coming from, say, Reddit, X, or Facebook? (22:00) – What were some of the lessons learned along the way? [Hint: agentic AI enters the chat] (25:30) – What improvements need to be made around metadata and lineage to combine this new feed with existing datafeeds and services? (30:00) – Fixed income has been electronifying for quite some time now, but progress in certain areas remains slow. At the same time, though, in just a few years the market has gone from generative AI to agents starting to act autonomously. What unique challenges and opportunities does that rapid technological evolution present to fixed-income markets? (36:00) – For a chief product officer, how do you balance governance with being innovation-forward? (40:00) – What are some of the infrastructure hurdles related to overnight trading that people need to start thinking about now?

It’s the last week of August. Tony, Reb, and Shen get together to chat about movies, TV series, music, and books. Listeners, be warned: this episode contains profanity.

Tony and Shen go through this story about Nasdaq’s trade surveillance software failing to send alerts. https://www.waterstechnology.com/emerging-technologies/7953177/red-alert-how-nasdaqs-smarts-became-surveillance-blind-spot

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