Welcome to the latest edition of At the Forefront: Fintech Conversations!
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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.
Andrew describes the core investment behind any expansion as less about the asset itself and more about building the systems to price risk at the most granular level and then aggregate that into a top-level risk model the firm is comfortable holding. He points to prediction markets as a natural extension of that same logic, since existing pricing and volatility models can translate to a binary-outcome format with the right layer of logic on top.
The conversation also explores how the old “fast versus smart” divide in market making has largely converged, with speed and technological sophistication now table stakes across the industry, even as different trading time horizons still call for different skill sets internally. Andrew pushes back on the idea that liquidity providers are mere middlemen, framing Old Mission’s role instead as warehousing and transferring risk across time zones, jurisdictions and investor types — work that becomes especially visible as markets move toward 24/5 trading.
Looking ahead, Andrew points to the continued growth of the ETF wrapper into more niche and derivative-driven strategies, and to client inbound as an increasingly important driver of where the firm expands next.
For more conversations with fintech and capital markets leaders, explore the At the Forefront podcast archive or our YouTube channel.
To learn more about Old Mission, visit oldmissioncapital.com.
TLDR
1:00 – Old Mission’s evolution from ETF arbitrage into futures, options, fixed income and more
8:00 – How the firm decides where to invest when entering a new asset class
10:30 – The convergence of speed and sophistication in market making
16:30 – Reframing the “middleman” criticism of liquidity providers
22:00 – What’s next: the growing ETF wrapper and client-driven product ideas