Securities Enforcement. Corporate Investigations. Financial Regulation.
Independent analysis of the laws, regulations, investigations, and enforcement actions shaping modern financial markets.
BRAEDEN ANDERSON
Braeden is one of the top securities lawyers in the country and was recognized by Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch® in America in the Financial Services Regulation Law and Securities Regulation categories. This honor is awarded to only the top 2% of attorneys in the United States and is based on a comprehensive peer-review survey.
Braeden helped lead Gesmer Updegrove to recognition in The Legal 500 United States for Corporate Investigations & White Collar Crime, Tier 3, and Finance: Fintech, Tier 4.
Braeden is active in the U.S. securities enforcement community through Securities Docket, where he has served on the 2025 and 2026 Advisory Boards and contributed video commentary through the Weekly Update.
Braeden was named the #1 United States author in FinTech in Mondaq’s Spring 2025 Thought Leadership Awards, reflecting the national reach and influence of his writing on fintech, securities regulation, and digital asset policy.
Inside FINRA’s 2026 Oversight Agenda: Emerging Risks, Persistent Pitfalls, and Examination Focus Areas
FINRA’s 2026 Oversight Report offers a clear preview of the examination and enforcement themes that will shape broker-dealer compliance in the year ahead. This piece distills the key risks, emerging priorities, and persistent problem areas firms should be addressing now.
New in Law360: Insider Trading Doctrine in an AI Market
I recently published an article in Law360 (linked below) that uses the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s settlement with Virtu as a jumping-off point to think through a question MNPI doctrine has not fully confronted yet. The article is less about Virtu as a case study and more about using a familiar enforcement posture to explore how those same principles may apply as AI becomes embedded in trading, surveillance, and compliance functions.
SEC Releases Staff Report on Capital-Raising Dynamics
On January 8, 2026, the SEC’s Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation released its annual staff report on capital-raising dynamics and delivered it to Congress. The report is not a policy document. It is a data compilation. But the data tells a clear story about how capital formation is functioning in practice.
Crenshaw’s Exit, Dissent, and the SEC’s Troubled Crypto Record
Acknowledging the value of dissent does not require suspending scrutiny. It is fair, and necessary, to ask whether the SEC during the prior administration, and Crenshaw in particular, demonstrated sufficient command of the crypto markets they sought to regulate, and whether the agency’s approach over the past several years meaningfully advanced investor protection or instead imposed avoidable costs through uncertainty and inconsistency.
New in Law360: The Tricky Issues Underscoring Prediction Market Regulation
Law360 has published my latest analysis addressing the unresolved regulatory conflicts and market-structure risks now defining prediction markets.
The article explains why the most important legal questions are no longer just about preemption, but about how these markets are structured, who provides liquidity, and what regulators and plaintiffs are likely to focus on next.