Boxes and Lines

Dave Nadig, ETF.com president and researcher who studies ETFs, market structure, and financial innovation. He discusses 2025's record ETF flows and the surge of active ETFs. Conversation covers tokenization and whether 24/7 trading will catch on. They also debate rising retail speculation, prediction markets, and why ETF plumbing looks sturdier than critics fear.

In this very special holiday edition of Boxes and Lines, Ronan and JR once again hand over the mics to the people who know them best (and roast them best), their spouses. Back by popular demand, Kara Ryan and Nick Buzard join the show for a special holiday edition of Boxes and Lines' spouses interviews. This episode features Nick’s incredible recovery after quintuple bypass surgery, the Ryans’ big Antarctica adventure, UFO sightings, ducks, awful gift-giving, in-law stories, and a hopeful toast to 2026. Settle in, grab a drink, and celebrate the close of 2025 with the Boxes and Lines family.

From the industry’s sprint toward extended hours to retail’s continued dominance to the ongoing debate around tokenization, Ronan and JR are breaking it all down. Stick around to the end for a beautiful "tribute" to their friendship this year. 

Ronan and JR sit down with David Gardner — co-founder of investor education juggernaut The Motley Fool, host of podcast Rule Breaker Investing, and author of a new book by the same title, Rule Breaker Investing: How to Pick the Best Stocks of the Future and Build Lasting Wealth. From getting booed on The View for making a dud stock pick (that later went 30x). to breaking the mold of buttoned-up Wall Street, David shares why optimism and long-term thinking can go far.

In this special episode of Boxes and Lines, Ronan and JR sit down with members of IEX’s 2025 summer intern class, mostly incoming seniors in engineering, marketing, finance, and cybersecurity, for a conversation that spans Gen Z in the workplace, what they’ve learned at IEX, and their hopes (and hot takes) on the future of work, tech, and life. Two intern panels, one insightful summer, and at least one spreadsheet created in 5th grade. The kids are alright. 

On the latest episode of Boxes and Lines, Ronan and JR welcome back Mett Kinak, Head of Global Trading at T. Rowe Price, for some real talk about market fragmentation, private rooms, and more. Mett also dispels his biggest pet peeve market structure myths, shares his skepticism about tokenizing equities, and pitches two new financial holidays—we'll raise a Bloody Mary to that. 

Subdollar stocks —those priced under $1—now make up nearly half of all share volume in U.S. markets, while contributing a fraction of the notional value (the actual dollar amount being traded). In this episode of Boxes and Lines Lite, Ronan and JR get into why this trend deserves more attention than it’s getting. From wild one-day volume spikes in penny stocks to distorted exchange market share and rebate incentives, they chat about how a handful of ultra-low-priced names are reshaping the trading landscape, and why it’s not just noise. 

We’re re-airing one of our most surprising and most popular episodes for you this week -- a deep dive into Aaron Burr from January 2023. This episode is guest-hosted by IEX’s Jayme Abrahamsen and features Andy Kaplan (former Greenlight Capital partner, now CEO of Freedom’s Edge Cider). In a previous episode, they broke down the mythology of Hamilton. This time, they turn the spotlight on his adversary, Aaron Burr. Vice President. Revolutionary War hero. Romance novel star. Duelist. Exile. They explore how Burr’s legacy was rewritten by enemies like Hamilton and Jefferson, how he became a political cautionary tale, and what it says about who we choose to put on our currency and why.

Tokenization. You’ve been hearing about it since 2017. So have we. In this short episode of Boxes and Lines, Ronan and JR unpack the hype around tokenizing stocks — what it actually means, what it changes, and what ends up left out of the conversation. They get into the post-trade plumbing, investor protections and regulatory realities. Hit play! 

IEX is often labeled a "3% market share" venue, but what does that number really reflect? In this Boxes and Lines Lite, Ronan and JR chat with IEX’s Matt Weinberg (Head of Business Development) and Sam Stevens (Head of Business Analytics) to unpack a cleaner way to think about institutional-accessible liquidity. They break down why total market share can be a misleading benchmark for routing, how "Institutional Market Share" better reflects where orders can actually interact, and what firms might be missing by benchmarking to the wrong number.