Virtu Expands Block Trading Workflow Seeking to Tackle Market Fragmentation

Virtu has upgraded its POSIT Alert block trading capabilities to include automated dark liquidity seeking in a bid to tackle fragmentation in the non-displayed markets, according to a story in The Trade news. Named Alert+, the upgraded workflow solution allows users to immediately elect to route residual share quantities not filled on POSIT Alert to be executed in the dark via Virtu’s Covert algorithm. The solution is intended to give traders an increased opportunity to execute any residual and reduce execution risk by sourcing incremental dark liquidity and completing orders more quickly. Covert is venue agnostic. It has three order category settings including passive, aggressive and neutral. Initially, the new Alert+ solution will use the neutral setting for orders. POSIT Alert is a block trading workflow available to buy-side clients of Virtu via a desktop application integrated into order and execution management systems or electronically via broker algorithms which class POSIT Alert as a venue and send orders on a conditional basis. By connecting POSIT Alert and Covert through Alert+, Virtu said the newly automated solution would tackle market fragmentation.