< Wall Street's Nerds: The World's Most Powerful Trading Executives

26. Robert Sloan
Managing Partner
S3 Partners
Last year: 28

Compiling and aggregating data has value, but the bigger payoff comes from "pointing people to better outcomes," says Robert Sloan, managing partner of S3 Partners. Three years ago the New York–based financial technology, analytics, and advisory firm that Sloan founded in 2003 introduced Blacklight, consolidating on a single software-as-a-service platform counterparty intelligence for all products and markets.

The continuing hunt for predictive tools — pointing to better investment outcomes — led to the release last summer of Black App. The all-time best seller from Bloomberg's App Portal, Black App draws from data on trillions of dollars of asset inventory to deliver short-interest analytics. These are "data points that portfolio managers want to have to start the day, and they were dealing with old information," Sloan, 53, says. "Now they get it in real time and can make decisions with confidence." Other innovative analytic tools are being prototyped, he adds.

 
The 2017 Trading Tech 40

1. Richard Prager BlackRock 2. Chris Isaacson Bats Global Markets 3. Bradley Peterson Nasdaq Methanol Gains Traction as an Alternative Energy Source Sponsored by CME Group May 5, 2025 4. Brad Levy MarkitSERV 5. Dan Keegan Citi

6. Glenn Lesko Bloomberg Tradebook 7. Bryan Durkin CME Group 8. Mayur Kapani Intercontinental Exchange 9. Mike Blum KCG Holdings 10. Raj Mahajan Goldman Sachs Group

11. Ronald DePoalo Fidelity Institutional 12. Nick Themelis MarketAxess Holdings 13. Jenny Knott NEX Optimisation 14. Billy Hult Tradeweb Markets 15. Rob Park IEX Group

16. Bill Chow & Richard Leung Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing 17. John Mackay (Mack) Gill MillenniumIT 18. Paul Hamill Citadel Securities 19. Eric Noll Convergex 20. Veronica Augustsson Cinnober Financial Technology

21. Tyler Moeller & Joshua Walsky Broadway Technology 22. Alasdair Haynes Aquis Exchange 23. Gaurav Suri Arcesium 24. Manoj Narang Mana Partners 25. Michael Chin & Neill Penney Thomson Reuters

26. Robert Sloan S3 Partners 27. Anton Katz & Stephen Mock AQR Capital Management 28. Donal Byrne Corvil 29. Stu Taylor Algomi 30. Alfred Eskandar Portware

31. Steven Randich Financial Industry Regulatory Authority 32. R. Cromwell Coulson OTC Markets Group 33. Peter Maragos Dash Financial 34. John Fawcett Quantopian 35. Donald Ross III PDQ Enterprises

36. Jennifer Nayar Vela Trading Technologies 37. Dan Raju Tradier 38. Susan Estes OpenDoor Trading 39. David Mercer LMAX Exchange 40. Oki Matsumoto Monex Group