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Virtu Financial
With over 500 buy-side clients , Virtu Financial supports all the core algorithms , covering equities and ETFs . It has been a good year for Virtu , having recently launched their new “ algo of algos ” framework , which is based upon the understanding of real-time market conditions , both at order arrival and during order life . They were also ranked fifth in Bloomberg ’ s 2023 European Institutional Equity Trading study , so it will come as little surprise that the firm has performed well in this year ’ s survey .
Beating the overall average by ten decimal places , Virtu is an outperformer in nine of the fifteen categories in this survey .
Virtu moved to expand its block trading algorithmic capabilities with the launch of Alert +, a workflow solution available in POSIT Alert , enhancing its features with the provision of automated routing to Virtu ’ s Covert execution algorithm to seek non-displayed liquidity .
Taking the top spot is breadth of dark pools at 6.35 , the second highest score among all 21 providers in this report . However , what is interesting to note is that this is actually a slight fall since last years score ( down 0.02 )! In second place , is increased trader productivity ( 6.15 ) although down slightly since last year , and in third is
ease of use ( 6.08 ) up by 0.15 . It is important to note that eight of the categories are sitting at “ very good ”.
Sitting at the other end is customisation features , with a score of 5.45 . Although in some good news , this has seen an improvement since last year , increasing by 0.17 .
When it comes to annual shifts , the most significant is for execution consulting and pre-trade cost , which has seen an increase in 0.32 , although this is still under the category average . Cost has seen a nice increase , up 0.27 pushing it to the top end of the “ good ” category , as has routing logic ( up 0.25 ).
The most significant downward trend is for price improvement , dropping from 5.95 last year to 5.69 this year . Although , in some good news , one trader commented that when it comes to a single / first fill , Virtu has good price improvement , adding that it is just on the parent order where there has been slippage . Virtu received 86 responses this year , with the majority coming in from the UK ( 35 %) and Europe ( 31 %), with 35 % of respondents reporting to holding an AUM of $ 50bn or more . Just under a quarter ( 24 %) of respondents are reporting to be considering making use of additional algorithmic providers over the next twelve months , with Berenberg getting a significant number of mentions from long-only managers .
VIRTU FINANCIAL RATINGS FOR ALGORITHMIC PERFORMANCE
Increased trader productivity |
Reduced market impact |
Execution consistency |
Cost Speed Anonymity Price improvement Customisation |
6.15 5.78 6.02 5.95 6.05 6.04 5.69 5.45
Ease of use |
Order routing logic / analysis |
Customer support |
Execution consulting |
Dark pool access |
Flexibility and sophistication of SOR |
Algo monitoring |
Average score |
6.08 5.87 6.03 5.69 6.35 6.01 5.66 5.92
KEY STATS Overall Outperformer : Category Outperformer : X9
6.35 Highest score
( Breadth dark pools )
|
5.45
Lowest score ( Customisation features )
|
0.32
Most improved ( Ex consulting and pre-trade cost )
|
-0.26
Least improved ( Price improvement )
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Issue 79 // thetradenews . com // 91 |