NEW YORK (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Virtu Financial, Inc. (Nasdaq:VIRT), a leading provider of global, multi-asset, financial services technology across the complete investment life cycle is excited to announce significant enhancements to POSIT Alert Europe. POSIT Alert is Virtu’s global block indications network which brings together liquidity sourced directly from trader OMSs with conditional orders from electronic participants.
Since the acquisition of ITG in March 2019, Virtu has made considerable investments to improve POSIT Alert’s back-end and front-end technologies. These investments have helped to improve the client experience by providing faster trade invitations and light up indications for Alert front-end users. By improving the client experience, POSIT Alert has seen increased order flow, leading to more liquidity and better fulfillment rates.
“Our POSIT Alert team did an outstanding job of listening to clients and quickly applying common sense technical enhancements to the existing platform. Not surprisingly, this led to a product which is more in line with our clients’ expectations; easy to use, fast and transparent,” said Steve Cavoli, EVP & Global Head of Virtu Execution Services. “Our goal, in everything we do, is to listen to clients and keep our products simple. We apply technology to make our clients’ job easier.”
“Client feedback and results so far have been extremely positive and we look forward to delivering additional enhancements to our users in 2020,” said Michelle Butler, Head of EU POSIT Alert.
Additionally, on November 19, 2019, POSIT Alert changed its indications logic to 1-to-1 light up functionality from multi-party light ups, where light up priority is given to POSIT Alert front-end users, followed by order size. This shift has resulted in the acceleration of the matching process through a simplified indication process, larger trade sizes, and fewer failed matches. These enhancements have produced an improved customer experience, as well as a 16%1 increase in the average trade size in POSIT Alert.
Finally, the POSIT Alert front end now supports a broader range of network security options, in addition to the SOCKS protocol. These additional connectivity options provide our clients with more flexibility in terms of how they can connect to POSIT Alert, as well as broadening further the potential user base for the platform.
Examples of Virtu’s POSIT Alert latency reduction efforts include:
Back-end latency improvements:
- Software enhancements and optimizations in the order matching logic
- Hardware upgrades for the indications matching engine
- New point of presence for the indications matching engine to a location closer to where the majority of conditional order routers are housed
As a result of these and other enhancements, latency has been improved by 60%2 and volume from external participants has increased by 59%2.
Front-end latency improvements:
- Enhancements to reduce the latency of the application layer which delivers the front-end to client desktops
- Optimization of the Alert front end to generate faster light up indications to the client’s desktop, increasing the chance of capturing block liquidity
1 Comparison period: Nov 1 – Nov 18, 2019 vs. Nov 19 – Dec 20, 2019
2 Comparison period: 1Q2019 vs. Apr-Nov 2019
About POSIT Alert
POSIT Alert is Virtu’s global institutional block indications network, which delivers block liquidity to subscribers in 38 countries. POSIT Alert unites liquidity sourced directly from trader OMSs with conditional orders from electronic participants for matching that does not require negotiation. Orders are routed to POSIT ATS/MTF or a third-party venue for execution.
