About
- Gordon Y Billard Associate Professor of Management and Finance
- Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2021-2024)
- Member, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Financial Stability Advisory Council (2025-Present)
- Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research
Voting History
Question A: The large demand of passive investors for shares in SpaceX in the days after the IPO will cause substantial overvaluation of the stock.
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Comment: Index funds are not everything. Investments not in index funds will provide price discovery.
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Question B: Rebalancing of investors' portfolios to make room for SpaceX will cause measurable price pressure on other large growth or technology stocks in the days after the IPO.
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Question A: Prediction markets provide substantially more accurate forecasts of key macro-financial variables than traditional sources such as surveys of professional forecasters.
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Comment: Eventually, prediction markets can prove useful in aggregation information about macroeconomic conditions, but a prerequisite is meaningful investor participation.
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Question B: Retail market participants would be measurably better off if sports contracts on prediction markets were regulated more like gambling than like financial derivatives.
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Comment: The CFTC regulatory framework at the Federal level is designed primarily for professional investors and large market participants, not for retail investors.
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Question A: Nasdaq has been consulting on inclusion of the largest companies in its indexes: https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/docs/NDX_Consultation-February_2026.pdf
Changing the rules for index inclusion to allow fast-track entry by extremely large IPOs (including waiving the free float requirement) is consistent with the objectives of passive index-based investing.
| Vote | Confidence | Median Survey Vote | Median Survey Confidence |
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Comment: Rules about index inclusion are primarily made by the market, for the market. As long as proposed changes to the methodology are broadcasted with a sufficient lead time and interested parties have a chance to provide feedback, it is consistent with passive investing.
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Question B: Changing the rules for index inclusion to allow fast-track entry by extremely large IPOs (including waiving the free float requirement) will make index fund investors measurably better off.
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Question A:Some major private credit funds - including those offered by BlackRock, Cliffwater and Morgan Stanley - have maintained their redemption limits, not fully filling all investor requests.
The enforcement of restrictions on withdrawals from private credit funds predicts that the funds will substantially underperform indices of liquid high-yield corporate bonds over the next 18 months.
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Question B: Assets in the private credit funds that are restricting withdrawals are substantially overvalued relative to their true market value.
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Interest-bearing stablecoins, either via direct issuer payments or exchange-provided rewards, would measurably erode the deposit franchise of banks in developed-market economies.
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Question A: Having the government-sponsored housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities would reduce mortgage rates by more than 25 basis points.
| Vote | Confidence | Median Survey Vote | Median Survey Confidence |
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Comment: In the past, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing on agency MBS was for much larger quantities (over $1 trillion). $200 bn is not an large amount for the agency MBS market.
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Question B: Having the government-sponsored housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities would measurably improve the affordability of home ownership.
| Vote | Confidence | Median Survey Vote | Median Survey Confidence |
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Comment: MBS purchases can at best reduce the mortgage rate. A lower financing cost can increase house prices, which does not help affordability.
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Question C: Restrictions on large institutional investors buying single-family homes would measurably improve the affordability of home ownership.
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Comment: The housing affordability problem is fundamental due to a supply/demand imbalance. In the short run, a restriction on institutional ownership of single family homes takes some demand out of the market and gives young families a better chance to buy homes.
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