Patrick Moley: Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. So, I think this quarter there was obviously a disconnect between what the industry volume and volatility metrics showed, and your results. But I think at least in the fourth quarter, if we looked at the 605 reports, it did show that the opportunity in the fourth quarter was the lowest that had been in a while. So, I appreciate the comments on the crypto opportunity, but I guess just as we sit here today, I guess my question is how do you think analysts and investors can do a better job of tracking your overall opportunity quarter-to-quarter? Thanks.
Douglas Cifu: Yes, it’s a great question, and obviously, we have continued to frustrate you all and investors for the last eight years, and it’s really a challenge to try to explain the various parts of our business. I mean, really the best way to do it is to look at the 605 reports and the 605 metrics. As a footnote, we have been on the forefront of asking for, we actually submitted a request, I think it was four years ago, for the SEC to update and modernize the 605 reporting to permit exactly this type of granular review and granular understanding of what it exactly we see within this sub segment, if you will, of the U.S. equities market. But if you track our 605 reports and look at what quoted spread was during the period, you’ll see that there was meaningful contraction in quoted spread and quoted spread effectively.
That’s the theoretical, if you will maximum opportunity we have to collect bid offer spread order – for 605 orders that come through to Virtu Financial. And you can look at it by broker and you can look at it by wholesalers. So during the quarter, there was meaningful contraction. So this quarter’s results, as I made it very clear in my remarks are really attributable to that performance by our customer Market Making business during the quarter. The non-customer Market Making business and Virtu Execution Services outperform metrics and certainly performed in line with your all expectations. That is the yin and the yang of that business. It tends to be less predictable and certainly not always correlated with marketplace volumes and volatility.
The other comment I will make is that you did see within this quarter, if you look on a more granular level at the marketplace, TCV, there was a significant increase in sub dollar stock trading in the quarter. I think it was roughly about 18% in December, for example, and there was a sub dollar name that on a particular day traded over 1 billion shares, just anecdotally, that tends to distort overall market volumes. Clearly, those stocks tend to be, there’s less opportunity because the spread is dramatically smaller, and they tend to be a lot more toxic in the way that they’re trained. As a footnote, a lot of those companies, in our view shouldn’t be listed public companies. We’ve talked to FINRA and the SEC about it. Frankly, I think NASDAQ could do a better job in policing some of those companies that shouldn’t be listed public companies, and frankly, should be trading OTC.
So I do think that that distorts some of the marketplace funds. I’m not using that as an excuse, trying to provide a little more granularity, but it really does come back down to within our 605 business, what was the opportunity expressed as quoted spread at the moment in time when we received those orders? And so that’s probably a good way for you guys to kind of slice and dice it. I think it will get better when the 605 reform happens, which should be the first proposal that comes out of the SEC. And for what it’s worth, quoted spread is up over 10% in January thus far from the 605 lines. And some of that I think is correlated to, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, some of the excitement and enthusiasm around these Bitcoin, ETFs. So rambling answer, I hope I gave you enough clarity around what you all could look at in the future.
Patrick Moley: Yes. That was great. Thank you.
Douglas Cifu: Thanks, Pat.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question for today comes from Chris Allen of Citi. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Chris Allen: Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to dig in a little bit on the organic growth initiatives. A little surprised to see a sequential decline in the fourth quarter. Crypto activity was much better in 4Q relative to 3Q. Index options activity was up sequentially. And you noted the capital markets activity was stronger after, I think you had a decent 3Q as well. So maybe can you just give us some color just in terms of the different moving parts where you’re seeing? I mean, obviously you’ve seen tailwinds in crypto, maybe [indiscernible] for options and capital markets activity from here.
Douglas Cifu: Yes, yes, very fair question. And obviously, we talk – we track the internal metrics with regard to options and ETF block, which were the major, which are and were during the fourth quarter, certainly the major components of our growth initiative. Crypto contributed, but we hadn’t seen the explosion, which obviously we’ve seen, as I mentioned with the launch of the Bitcoin, ETFs as of January 11, I think it was in the – in this quarter. The short answer is that with regard particularly to options Market Making, the opportunity in terms of like what the spread was – excuse me, what the spread was per contract declined significantly in the fourth quarter. And so that really explains a lot of what you’re seeing in terms of the sequential decline.
