In an industry racing toward automation, zero-commission apps and algorithmic everything, Kevin Schultz, Chairman of Triad Securities, believes the edge still starts with a human voice.
“We don’t use voicemail. Everyone picks up the phone all the time,” Schultz told Traders Magazine.
That simple practice, he suggests, explains why many of Triad’s clients and employees have stayed for 20 or even 30 years.
This year, the firm celebrates its 50th anniversary. Schultz’s father, Richard E. Schultz, founded Triad in 1976 as a retail brokerage, navigating the market structure of the 1970s and ’80s before pivoting toward more specialized trading. In the 1980s, he began working with traders active in closed-end funds and IPOs, executing “two-cent business” trading on the floor and OTC, helping clients sell shares.
By the 1990s, the firm expanded into introduced clearing for select clients. What started as a traditional retail brokerage gradually evolved into something more niche and more institutional, Schultz shared.
“I was with him in the late ’80s, early ’90s,” he said of his father. But he eventually struck out on his own, trading for roughly 17 years and running small hedge funds backed by family money. He did two stints at Millennium before returning to Triad in 2008, in the teeth of the financial crisis. “I came back in ’08 to join my dad,” he recalled. By then, the firm had already developed its introduced prime brokerage model, clearing on an introduced basis at other firms, now including Wedbush and Fidelity.
Today, Triad is firmly focused on professional traders, emerging hedge funds and, increasingly, family offices. Retail business is largely in the past, aside from a handful of friends and family accounts, according to Schultz. “Our customer base is the professional trader,” he said.
A Family Firm in More Than Name
Triad employs about 30 people. Some are relatives, Schultz said, cousins, nephews, even Schultz’s uncle, who has been with the firm for five decades and “still comes in most mornings despite being semi-retired”. Others are the children of his father’s longtime friends, now in their 50s themselves.
“It’s very much a family firm, a family atmosphere,” Schultz said.
He added that the head of the trading desk has been there for decades. The back-office leader has been with the firm for more than 30 years. Schultz sees that stability as an extension of the firm’s philosophy.
“Treating people with dignity and respect is the number one way to keep quality people,” he said. In his view, retention flows from an environment where employees are trusted, supported and “held to high standards.” Market knowledge and execution skill matter, he added, but so do accountability and the ability to stay calm under pressure.
That culture of continuity extends to clients. One of Triad’s biggest strengths, Schultz said, is retention. “A lot of our customers stayed with us for 20 to 30 years,” he noted, a rare statistic in an era of rapid account switching and platform turnover.
High-Touch in a Low-Touch World
If there is a defining feature of modern trading, it is frictionless independence, according to Schultz. He said that apps promise commission-free trades and sleek interfaces, but often little human support. Schultz sees that as a gap.
“People who trade retail deal with large discount brokerages and can’t get anyone on the phone,” he said. The same, he argued, can be true even for large institutional firms. “We’re all about service. That’s really what our motto is.”
Triad operates as an agency-only trading desk, executing client orders without taking principal risk. In many cases, the firm functions as an outsourced trading desk for hedge funds and family offices, working block orders, and providing operational support around execution. On a typical day, Schultz said, clients trade millions of shares through Triad. Their broader “away” business, trades executed at other firms, can be roughly double that of Triad trades.
At the center of its offering is a specialized product: an IPO and secondary consensus report that forecasts how new issues are likely to open on pricing day. “It makes us a little different,” Schultz said. As capital markets activity ebbs and flows, that expertise has helped the firm maintain relevance during slower issuance cycles and position itself for renewed IPO momentum.
As the IPO market shows signs of heating up again, Schultz said Triad’s approach remains consistent. The firm ensures clients are “well informed on the deals that are coming and when they’re coming,” while helping them “participate thoughtfully,” balancing opportunity with risk.
Technology With Guardrails
For a firm that emphasizes talking directly to clients and personal relationships, Triad invests heavily in technology.
Clients access execution management systems (EMS), while Triad’s traders use order management systems (OMS) to route trades across multiple venues. The firm offers algorithmic suites and tools aimed at optimizing routing, visibility and pricing.
“We invest heavily in tools that improve order routing, market visibility, risk controls,” Schultz said. “The goal is speed and precision — without sacrificing oversight,” he added.
Risk management, he stressed, is embedded in daily operations. Triad has built an in-house application that integrates data from multiple sources in real time, generating account- and firm-level risk profiles. Pre-trade controls and clearing escalation protocols are central to the trading desk’s workflow.
Regulatory change, in Schultz’s view, should not be “disruptive theater but routine adaptation”. The firm works to align compliance and trading so that new rules become part of “normal operation, rather than the cause of resistance.” The key, he said, is interpreting regulatory requirements into practical workflows.
Global Reach, 24/7 Reality
Although headquartered in the U.S., Triad covers IPOs globally, something Schultz believes sets it apart. The firm operated an FCA-regulated London desk for 23 years before closing it in the late 2010s and bringing its international trader back stateside. Today, foreign market openings are handled domestically.
As markets inch closer to 24/5 and even 24/7 trading models, Schultz knows the operational burden will grow. “If you give them systems, you have to have somebody watching it,” he said. He anticipates hiring another trader to cover overnight hours, extending a day that already begins around 5 a.m. for U.S.-based staff.
The Next Frontier: Tokenized Securities
Looking ahead, Schultz sees opportunity in digital assets, but not in the form of crypto maximalism. Triad sits on the Global Digital Finance (GDF) committee focused on blockchain-based securities, including tokenized money market funds and Treasury repos.
His ambition is to help the firm become an early mover in navigating tokenized equities and securities. Yet he is skeptical that purely decentralized models will displace traditional finance.
“I don’t think that’s going to be the new way,” he said, referring to blockchain systems that aim to operate outside established firms. Instead, he believes the future lies in established broker-dealers integrating new technology within existing regulatory frameworks. The combination, he argues, will create the necessary “flexibility for regulation and customer service.”
If a tokenized instrument qualifies as a security, Schultz emphasized, Triad plans to be well positioned to trade it for clients. He expects blockchain-based tokenization of equities to be “a big advancement” in the coming year.
For now, though, the firm’s identity remains rooted in something older than blockchain and newer than the trading floor: accountability, relationships and a live person on the other end of the line.
