Virtu basically only does market-making which is a low risk trade. You put on small positions with a tiny statistical edge hundreds of thousands of times a day to make the bid-ask spread. It's like flipping a coin that comes up heads 50.05% of the time and betting $1 on it a million times a day. If something breaks or loses too much you exit your risk and turn off for the day. If a stock doesn't work in the portfolio, you take it out. If strategies or markets stop making money, you turn them off. Even if they buy a company that goes bankrupt, their notional position is less than their daily profit firm-wide.
Firms that make markets basically make money trading every day absent technology issues. That doesn't mean the company itself is profitable every day. It costs a lot of money to build the technology and strategies, and for every Virtu out there, there's a dozen failed HFT startups.
Firms that make markets basically make money trading every day absent technology issues. That doesn't mean the company itself is profitable every day. It costs a lot of money to build the technology and strategies, and for every Virtu out there, there's a dozen failed HFT startups.