Adena Friedman
Chair and CEO, Nasdaq. On 2 shows, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveoperator@adenatfriedman ↗LinkedIn ↗nasdaq.com/about/our-people/adena-t.-friedman ↗Wikipedia ↗Instagram ↗
Adena Friedman became CEO of Nasdaq in 2017—making her the first woman to lead a major global exchange—and has driven its transformation into a technology and data analytics provider. She previously served as the Chief Financial Officer and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group.
2shows
1appearances
19statements
18resolved
14supported
1contradicted
78%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Adena Friedman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Adena Friedman: Nasdaq integrating equity tokenization into core public markets
“So this morning we announced that we're going to be bringing tokenization into our markets, so making sure that equities are tokenized and traded on market, in the markets, not in a side sleeve, but actually in the core markets.”
Adena Friedman: SEC Chair Paul Atkins wants to revitalize public IPOs
“You know, he is forward leaning. He wants to create change. He wants to make IPOs great again.”
Friedman: U.S. dollar will remain the global reserve currency long-term
“I am a huge believer in dollar as a reserve currency, and the fact we will be persistent as a reserve currency over a long period of time.”
Adena Friedman: High U.S. national debt is starting to impact markets
“The amount of debt that we have in the country is something that is, we're starting to see manifest itself in the markets, and we'll make it so that they look for alternatives if they feel like the return characteristics of a treasury are different than what t…”
Adena Friedman: Nasdaq is moving toward 24/5 U.S. equities trading
“We announced several months ago that we're moving to 24 five.”
Friedman: Nasdaq aims to enter crypto by serving institutional clients
“I would say that what we would want to do is really work with our institutional clients because they also have not been able or willing to play in the markets.”
Adena Friedman: Options differ from prediction markets via multi-price, multi-duration bets
“Options are, I think, a great reflection of a prediction market. The difference, though, is that in a prediction market, it's a binary yes, no, versus an option market, you're laying, you're layering in your bets across multiple price points and different dura…”
Friedman: Fed independence is crucial for enabling long-term economic decision-making
“I do think that the Fed, we've benefited for almost 250 years on having Fed independence. I think that it's important to have, allow the Fed to think long term.”
Nasdaq processed 95 billion daily messages with 20-microsecond latency
“Today, we had ninety-five billion messages come into our systems today, and we had a median, you know, return time of 20 microseconds on from order to trade.”
Friedman: Official market open and close will persist in 24/5 trading
“The market open and the market close will continue to exist in a world of 24 five markets.”
Friedman: Lack of regulatory clarity has kept Nasdaq out of crypto
“I think what's held us back is the lack of regulatory clarity.”
Friedman: Heavy skew toward passive investing creates arbitrage for active managers
“Whenever it skews towards the passive, what happens is that, that creates arbitrage opportunities for the active. If the herd really kind of starts to move the stocks in a certain direction, the active manager should step in and take advantage of that arbitrag…”
Friedman: Active managers struggle because top index companies deliver hard-to-beat returns
“It becomes very difficult to beat The index because these companies are so very hard. It's hard to find companies that deliver a better return than they do. And I think that's where active management has struggled just because they are trying to beat a benchma…”
Adena Friedman: Nasdaq grew from $2.5B revenue to over $2.5B EBITDA
“When I became CEO, we had about two and a half million billion dollars in revenue. Today, or as of the end of last year, we had a little over two and a half billion dollars of EBITDA.”
Friedman: Nasdaq sells market technology to 135 other global markets
“We provide our technology to our 17 markets, And we sell it to a 135 other markets around the world.”
Friedman: Nasdaq's index business has $700B in tracking assets
“So our index business now has about seven hundred billion dollars of assets under management that are tied to those great innovators, in addition to creating better abilities for companies to navigate the public markets and investors to find find investments.”
Friedman: Nasdaq 100 has averaged a 14.25% annual return over 40 years
“And when we look at just the performance of the Nasdaq 100 over 40 years of its existence, the average return on the Nasdaq 100 over those 40 years is a 14.25% annual return.”
Friedman: US options markets feature 1.5 million strike prices today
“There's, by the way, a million and a half strikes in the options markets today.”
The other half of the tape: Adena Friedman's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 5 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most David Friedberg 3Sonal Chokshi 1Orlando Bravo 1Jeff Jordan 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
All-In 4
the a16z Podcast 3
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Adena's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Chair and CEO, Nasdaq | 0 | 0 | 82% 9/11 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Chair and CEO, Nasdaq | 1 | 19 | 71% 5/7 | full record on All-In → |