It has become the most laughed at chart in finance: every time anyone who has spent even a few days trading, looks at Virtu's public track record shown on the chart below and which represents one trading day loss in 6 years of flawless profitability, riotous laughter ensues as it confirms what everyone knows: the market has become a regulator-endorsed cesspool of HFT fraud, where the algos make all the money due to countless predatory and parasitic practice listed and explained here too many times to count, enabled further by a fragmented and broken market whose exchanges now break on a daily basis.
[6]
Moments ago ahead of its official break for trading, and one which many anticipate could well be a repeat of the BATS IPO debacle [7], Doug Cifu, was asked how Virtu could have just one trading day loss in 6 years.
His explanation:
"we win more than we lose."
Odd, that was probably Bernie Madoff's "explanation" during those rigorous SEC audits.
Still, but the question arises: who is on the losing side of all those winning trades, and how can someone or someones lose money on every single trade for 6 years and not care?
Oh yes, because the market is rising thanks to the Fed and as a result, who cares about losing a few pennies on every single trade millions of times a day when every single central bank has gone all-in - and succeeded in - in reflating the biggest global asset bubble in history.
So congratulations Virtu, enjoy your IPO. Just make sure your founders cash out before the next massive crash, because one can be 100% certain of one thing: everyone - the regulators, the enforcers, the Fed, the banks, the media - will blame it on the nameless, faceless high frequency trading algorithms.
