Virtu Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIRT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

In addition, we have expanded our capability in rates both on the run and off the run. We have over 50 firms that we are enabled for trading rates, again, using primarily Bloomberg and TradeWeb. We’re agnostic as to the distribution mechanics. We know those are both great firms that give us scale and credibility. And so it’s very early days of seeing maybe less than like 5% of the volume from 5% to 10% of the clients on these platforms. It’s something that I’m personally engaged with because I think it’s a marketplace where we can add value. Again, there’s a lot of room and I think a lot of opportunity, and we’ve always done well competing in our part of the market and using our style. So, these are two marketplaces, if you will, both credit and rates where we think that we can add value and that announcement from Citadel just frankly validates the decisions that we made a couple of years ago to reallocate some of our resources, capital and personnel into this area.

Daniel Fannon: Thank you.

Douglas Cifu: Thank you, Dan.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] And for our next question, we will go to the line of Ken Worthington from JPMorgan. Ken, your line is now open.

Ken Worthington: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I would love an update in terms of where you are in the single stock option Market Making rollout road map. Is the 605, 606 type of business still the end goal for you in options? And maybe how far along is Virtu in terms of being able to effectively participate in that single stock options business the way you do for equities for client business?

Douglas Cifu: Yes. Good question. It is definitely the end goal. I would say not that we’ve got distracted from it. I think the opportunity, frankly in index market making, both on the customer and non-customer side has frankly dwarfed, can that opportunity, I mean you probably track all the metrics in terms of what the SPI and SPX volumes were relative to single options and there has been a dramatic shift. I don’t know if it was because of zero date options or whatnot. I mean that’s for — you can ask CBOE and some of the other smart people ask why that’s happened. But I mean, I guess our decision to compete first in the index family has been validated because we’ve seen an enormous shift of interest on the institutional and frankly, on the retail side because you can see what’s a customer option and what’s not a customer option in a lot of these venues to the index family.

So, it is certainly in the road map, but it has descended in importance because the addressable market is so huge in the index family here in the United States. I would also point out that we do have an up and running index business in Asia, primarily in the Indian and Japanese markets. So, I don’t want to put a date on it because every time I suggest we’re going to be — we’ll be operational by so and such date, we keep pushing it out because there’s such an opportunity in the index family that we continue to — and frankly, with MEMEX and different options, venues continue to come on, there’s a lot more opportunity to improve our index Market Making capabilities in the United States.

Ken Worthington: Great. Thank you.

Douglas Cifu: Thanks Ken.

Operator: Our next question today is from the line of Chris Allen of Citi. Chris, your line is open if you like to proceed.