According to FINRA, Virtu Americas LLC was censured and fined $750,000 for overstating its advertised trade volume on Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, two major subscription-based providers of market data.

The firm configured its systems to automatically advertise trading volume throughout the day and relied on an end-of-day process to reconcile differences between intra-day advertised volume and executed volume. However, due to changes the firm made to its Bloomberg messaging format, trade volume cancellation messages could not be processed by Bloomberg. As a result, both the volume intended to be cancelled and the replacement volume were advertised.

Additionally, an error in the firm's transaction coding process caused the firm to erroneously advertise certain journaled transactions that were not eligible for advertisement.

Overall, the firm overstated its advertised trade volume in approximately 110,500 instances by approximately 17.1 billion shares.

FINRA found that the firm's supervisory system was not reasonably designed to ensure compliance. When the firm changed its trade advertisement messaging format, it did not reasonably test whether its end-of-day data was accurately communicated to Bloomberg. The firm had no supervisory reviews to monitor the accuracy of its advertised trade volume as actually published.

Accurate trade volume information is important for investors making trading decisions and for overall market transparency. Overstated volume can mislead market participants about liquidity and trading interest in particular securities.

The firm has revised its supervisory procedures and implemented daily reports comparing advertised volumes against 20-day average daily trading volumes to detect potential anomalies.