About Connor Houlihan

Connor Houlihan is a Connecticut-based finance professional whose career in securities and fund distribution runs from Fidelity to Foreside and from Chicago to Connecticut, with registrations at five broker-dealers between 2011 and 2024. His work and writing examine how financial products are built, explained, distributed, and evaluated. He writes for readers who want the machinery described clearly rather than hidden behind jargon.

2011 to 2024 on the distribution side

Connor began his registered career at Fidelity Brokerage Services in March 2011, passing the Series 7 and Series 63 exams that spring. A large brokerage is a demanding first classroom: process, compliance, scale, and a daily reminder that behind every product is a person with a question. He added the Series 65 in early 2014.

In May 2015 he joined DWS Distributors in Chicago, the U.S. fund-distribution arm of Deutsche Bank’s asset-management business, and spent nearly five years on the asset-manager side of the table, where a fund’s objectives, risks, fees, and role in a portfolio are explained to the advisers, platforms, and institutions that evaluate it. After a brief registration with Sentinus-Halo Securities in 2020, he moved to Foreside Fund Services, a third-party distributor and principal underwriter that serves many fund sponsors, and stayed from October 2020 until February 2024. His most recent registration, with Alto Securities, ran through April 2024.

He is not currently registered with a broker-dealer. The full history is on the Experience page and in his FINRA BrokerCheck record, which shows no disclosures.

What he writes about

• Fund distribution and markets: how a fund reaches an adviser’s platform and what happens along the way
• Share classes, fees, and fund fact sheets
• RIA channels and alternatives
• Due diligence, BrokerCheck, and Form ADV
• Corporate valuation and business strategy
• Connecticut business and community

The common thread is translation: taking something complicated and making it useful to another person without flattening it into slogans. Start with Fund Distribution Explained or browse the Essays index.

Connecticut, on purpose

Connor is based in the Hartford area. Connecticut sits between the two financial capitals of the Northeast without being either of them, and the state’s own finance community, from Hartford’s insurers and asset managers to the investment firms of Stamford and Greenwich, is the home market for his local writing. The Connecticut section collects those pieces.

Life beyond the desk

Outside finance, Connor is interested in golf, analytics, course strategy, and the discipline of improving performance through careful measurement. He treats a round of golf the way he treats a fund review: define the objective, separate what you can control from what you cannot, and keep an honest record. Golf as Business explains why, and Finance and Creativity makes the case that good analysis needs imagination as well as rigor.

Verify, cite, or get in touch

Everything on this site about Connor Houlihan’s career can be checked against the public record: his FINRA BrokerCheck entry (CRD 5881228) and his LinkedIn profile. The Securities Background page explains how to read that record, and the FAQ answers the questions people ask most. For writing, speaking, or professional opportunities, use the Contact page. This site is educational and editorial; nothing on it is individualized investment advice.