Almost 250 capital markets professionals gathered at Edison Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday night for Markets Media’s sixth-annual Markets Choice Awards.

The MCAs span the most important constituencies of institutional trading and technology — buy-side investment managers, sell-side execution desks, hedge funds, exchanges and trading platforms, established technology providers, and emerging fintech firms. 

The methodology in selecting nominees and then winners is simple yet thorough, and keeps the focus on the most important opinions: those of market participants.

The multi-month process in January with a call for nominations from our readership. With this voluminous raw data as a starting point, editorial staff conducted research and telephone interviews and consulted with the MCA Advisory Board to winnow the field. From there, shortlists for many of the categories were published and reader votes were tallied as another input. Internal deliberations hammered out the final winners.

The winners are…

Rising Star	Maria Adamjee, CenturyLink
Rising Star	Anshul Anand, Thesys Technologies
Rising Star	Kelly Anlas, Clearpool Group
Rising Star	Tim Coates, Synechron
Rising Star	Maria Dwyer, GlobalCollateral
Rising Star	Allison Gott, Citadel Securities
Rising Star	Tyler Hallmark, OpenDoor Securities
Rising Star	Alexandria McGrath, Vela
Rising Star	Tim Miller, Dash Financial Technologies
Rising Star	Erica Thomas, Tradeweb Markets
Best New Block Trading Product	CODA Block
Best Clearinghouse	Options Clearing Corporation
Best Sell Side OMS	Fidessa
Best in AI	Synechron AI Accelerators
Best Fixed Income Trading Platform	Tradeweb Markets
Best Buy-Side EMS	Portware Enterprise, a FactSet Trading Solution
Best Exchange Technology	Nasdaq
Best Mid-Sized Broker-Dealer	Clearpool Group
Best in RegTech	Thesys Technologies
Best New Trading Platform	OpenDoor Securities
Best Dark Pool	Luminex Trading & Analytics
Best Fixed Income Data Provider	MTS BondsPro
Best Multi-Asset EMS	FlexTrade
Best Agency Broker	Instinet
Best Enterprise Risk Management	Aplomb Strategies
Best Algorithmic Trading Provider	Dash Financial Technologies
Best Global Exchange Group	CME Group
Best New Product	GlobalCollateral’s Margin Transit Utility
Neil DeSena Market Advocate Award	Greg Tusar
Best Buy-Side Fixed Income Trading Technology	Wellington Management
Best Buy-Side Equity Index Trading Desk	Vanguard
Buy-Side Quantitative Trader of the Year	Enrico Cacciatorre, Voya Investment Management
Best Hedge Fund Trading Desk	AQR
Best Buy-Side Equity Trading Desk	J.P. Morgan Asset Management
Efficiency and Resourcefulness in Trading	Mark Louka, J.P. Morgan Asset Management
Best Buy-Side Fixed Income Trading Desk	State Street Global Advisors
Best Buy-Side Trading Enterprise	BlackRock
Buy-Side Trader of the Year	Dan Royal, Janus Henderson Investors
Woman of the Year	Jen Nayar, Vela
Best Company	Liquidnet
CEO of the Year	Michelle Neal, BNY Mellon Markets
Lifetime Achievement	Terry Duffy, CME Group
Best New Product – Dark Pool Trading	Fidessa BlockShadow
Best New Product – Execution	FlexAlgoWheel