Open Order Podcast: Adaptive CEO on the Modernization Mandate in Trading Technology

In a new episode of the Open Order podcast, presented by Traders Magazine, editor Terry Flanagan sits down with Matt Barrett, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive, to discuss how capital markets firms are rethinking their trading technology — and why the modernization mandate is becoming impossible to ignore.

The conversation centers on a recent industry survey, “The Modernization Mandate: Who Calls the Shots on Trading Tech?”, conducted by Global Trading (Traders Magazine’s sister publication) in partnership with Adaptive. Interviewing 50 capital markets professionals across the US, EMEA, and APAC, the survey explores how firms are approaching technology investment, governance, and execution in increasingly complex markets.

Matt and Terry unpack:

• Key market drivers in 2026: Innovation around and adoption of prediction markets, 24/7 trading and tokenization
• Why now is a better time to modernize trading technology than it was five or ten years ago, given advances in cloud and open source.
• How leading firms use technology as a differentiator, moving away from “totalitarian” vendor stacks toward componentized, cloud-enabled architectures.
• The survey’s key drivers for modernization: the competitive need to innovate, keeping up with data management, and maintaining connectivity to venues.
• What the survey reveals about ROI from modernization initiatives — and why returns are higher than many firms expect.
• Where AI fits into the picture, and why it’s likely to amplify the need for modernization rather than replace it.

Whether you’re on the buy side, sell side, or running a venue or trading platform, the episode offers practical insight into how to think about modernization, how to structure your technology partnerships, and how AI and new asset classes may shape your roadmap over the next three to five years.

Listen to the Open Order Podcast

Listen to the full conversation on Traders Magazine’s Open Order podcast on your preferred streaming platform to dive deeper into the survey findings and what they mean for the future of trading technology.