Ryan Riordan

Associate Professor & Distinguished Professor of Finance

Ryan is an Associate Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Finance at Smith School of Business. Ryan studies how investors and exchanges use technology, in particular high-frequency trading systems, and the impact of these systems on the quality of financial markets. Too much technology, or its misapplication, can result in markets that are unstable and expensive to trade in. Not enough technology can mean investors do not meet their investment targets. He is also looking at a broader question: Is faster price discovery better for markets?

He is exploring the impact of ever faster price discovery on other important market factors, such as liquidity, short-term volatility, and long-term price discovery and efficiency. His work has been published in the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Financial Markets, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems. His work has won awards such as the Michael J. Brennan Award for the best paper published in the Review of Financial Studies, and the Philip Brown Prize for the best paper published using Sirca data. In 2015 Ryan was awarded a SSHRC grant and the Smith School of Business New Research Award.

Before starting at Queen’s, Ryan was assistant professor at University of Ontario Institute of Technology and assistant professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He earned his PhD from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and MBA from the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. Before embarking on an academic career, Ryan worked as a trader and risk manager at HSBC Trinkaus in Dusseldorf, Germany.