Steve Cavoli is Global Head of Execution Services at Virtu Financial.
What industry trends have been prominent but are now fading (or will soon fade)?
Exchange and ATS proliferation. We’ve likely passed the peak. Growing industry frustration with fragmentation, combined with renewed discussion around possibly scaling back the trade-through prohibition rule (611), signals a shift toward consolidation rather than expansion of new venues.
As the market becomes saturated, we expect a move toward simpler, more efficient matching models. In this environment, we believe that smart execution algorithms will increasingly drive trading decisions and liquidity will flow more directly and bilaterally instead of through an expanding set of anonymous venues.
What surprised you in 2025?
The pace and enthusiasm with which buy-side clients have embraced alternative liquidity sources in 2025 has been striking. Many have moved beyond traditional exchanges and ATSs to pursue more diverse and better-segmented opportunities. Any lingering hesitation around single-dealer platforms has abated as clients recognize the meaningful liquidity available directly from a number of providers.
This shift has accelerated the adoption of IOI-driven liquidity solutions, tailored directly to an algorithm’s objectives, and iterated in ways to benefit clients. Our enhancements through vEQ Link and a roster of the strongest dealers in the market have materially expanded what our execution strategies can deliver.
That said, intelligent access alone isn’t enough. Clients now expect clear transparency that connects algorithmic intent at the child-order level to the actual execution outcomes. Taken together, these capabilities have driven exceptionally strong client adoption and satisfaction.
What are your clients’ pain points and how have these changed over the past year?
We didn’t see fundamentally “new” pain points in 2025—access to liquidity remains the perennial challenge, only more acute as markets have welcomed more venues and become increasingly fragmented. To address this pressure, we’ve helped clients by aggregating single-dealer liquidity from the industry’s largest providers. Doing this well requires three things:
- Pre-trade transparency: Access alone isn’t enough; algorithms make better decisions on behalf of clients when available liquidity is reasonably actionable and knowable (through IOIs and other methods).
- High-fidelity interaction: Once actionable, through an IOI for example, the algorithm must ingest and respond to the data at speed, processing a firehose of data without the throttling constraints many firms still face.
- Post-trade accountability: Upon parent order completion, clients must be able to measure expected versus actual outcomes through robust post-trade analytics.
