Shari Noonan was the guest speaker in Marquette's AIM class on Wednesday, December 7, 2016

The Founder and CEO of Rialto Trading, Shari Noonan, Visited the AIM Program This Week

Shari Noonan

Shari Noonan is the Founder and CEO of Rialto Trading (http://rialtotrading.com/). She is a Marquette alumnus and former COO of Global Equity Trading, Deutsche Bank.

Shari provided the AIM students with a lecture on the history of the evolution of the US equity market structure. The timeline shown below was created by Ms. Noonan and she took the students through the major technology and regulatory changes. 

Shari Noonan's Timeline on the Evolution of the US Equity Markets

For instance, she talked about how in 2001 the move to decimalization (the process of converting stock quotes and prices from fractions into decimals) effected markets. Shari noted that the main impact of decimalization was to shrink spreads from a minimum of a sixteenth of a dollar or 6.25 cents to 1 cent, which also led to low costs and greater market liquidity. While it saved investors an estimated $1 billion per year, it also changed the competitive landscape of the industry. 

Shari Noonan presents at Marquette

Dr. David Krause, AIM program director said, “The Marquette students and I have visited with Shari in NYC during our fall trips the past several years, so it was a real pleasure to have her back on campus again. During her career she has been at the center of the changes that have taken place within the financial markets. Her experiences at Instinet, REDI, 

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank have prepared her for the founding of Rialto Trading. I am excited for her as she helps to reinvent the corporate fixed income market.”

Dr. Krause, Jaclyn Godwin, and Shari Noonan

After answering students questions about the evolution of the US equity markets, Ms. Noonan talked about her new firm, Rialto Trading. This fintech startup employs technology to create an all-to-all trading network. They system will combine pre-trade analytics, anonymous crossing, and advanced data mining to provide next generation fixed income trading functionality. These offerings are all wrapped up with machine learning, allowing institutional buy-side clients to become smarter the more they trade.

Rialto’s trading platform gives institutional traders the tools to source and execute fixed income trades in a completely dark and anonymous fashion, thereby providing the ability to discreetly source, buy and sell large block fixed income positions with mitigated market impact.

Shari is a member of Marquette’s College of BusinessAdministration’s Leadership Council. This group meets several times each year and is tasked with the mission of assisting the Dean and the College leadership team in the development and execution of key strategies for growth and innovation for the College of Business Administration. This prominent group of global business leaders is helping to lead the College into our second 100 years of Jesuit business education.