Douglas Cifu

Douglas Cifu is CEO of Virtu Financial, one of the most prominent high-frequency market makers in the world. Virtu became famous during its 2014 IPO process when its prospectus disclosed that the firm had only one losing trading day in 1,278 consecutive days — a statistic that drew both admiration for its technology and criticism from those who argued such consistency in a supposedly competitive market implied structural advantages. Virtu operates as an electronic market maker across equities, options, fixed income, and currencies globally. The firm has argued that its activities provide liquidity and reduce transaction costs for retail and institutional investors by narrowing bid-ask spreads. Virtu went public in 2015, became one of the few HFT firms to be publicly listed, and acquired Knight Capital Group (renamed KCG) in 2017, significantly expanding its market making operations.