Sean Lew

Principal

Contact

  • New York

Education

Sean Lew specializes in regulatory enforcement and litigation involving complex financial economics and data issues. Dr. Lew applies his financial expertise to a range of matters that include antitrust claims in financial markets, improper trading and market manipulation, high-frequency trading and electronic platforms, securities litigation, and asset pricing and valuation. He has significant experience analyzing large proprietary and public datasets, particularly as they relate to electronic order books and transaction data.

Dr. Lew’s experience covers a variety of financial products, including futures, swaps, and vanilla and exotic options, and spans such markets as equities, credit, rates, precious metals, foreign exchange, treasuries, and corporate and government bonds. His recent work includes:

Antitrust claims in financial markets
  • Analyzing transaction costs and determinants of the bid-ask spread in financial markets.
  • Assessing interaction between broker-dealers and clients across exchange-driven and over-the-counter (OTC) markets.
  • Determining the impact of market-specific institutional features that drive benchmark fixings.
Improper trading and market manipulation
  • Analyzing spoofing, layering, and other manipulative trading strategies using order book data across equities, futures, and FX electronic platforms.
  • Analyzing hedging around different types of barrier options.
  • Evaluating execution of large orders and trading around benchmark fixings.
High-frequency trading and electronic platforms
  • Evaluating how different types of participants impact price discovery and market quality.
  • Assessing order types and order matching within a dark pool.
  • Evaluating routing logic of execution algorithms that target both lit and dark platforms.
  • Analyzing the impact of market-making algorithms on market liquidity, quoted spreads, and price volatility.
  • Evaluating “last look” functionality on broker platforms to evaluate their rationale and impact on platform users.
  • Reviewing aggressive trading strategies, such as latency arbitrage.
Securities litigation
  • Analyzing the efficiency of equities, bonds, and options markets.
  • Evaluating cryptocurrencies and metrics by which they could be considered securities.
  • Modeling asset pricing for security returns using industry and other risk factors.
  • Calculating potential damages under Rule 10b-5 and Section 11 claims.
Asset pricing and valuation
  • Analyzing longitudinal pension fund performance to determine geographic and sector allocation and stock selection within sectors.
  • Conducting derivative valuations of credit default swaps (CDS) portfolios.
  • Assessing spreads that dealers and end users face in CDS markets.
  • Evaluating esoteric instruments such as carbon credit portfolios, oil fields, energy service companies, equipment financing special purpose vehicles, and life insurance contract portfolios.
Press Release

Cornerstone Research Promotes Five to Principal

  • “Market Manipulation,” New York State Bar Association 2022 London Global Conference, 2 December 2022