Definition
A lit venue is a trading venue that publicly displays pre-trade order book information, including bids, offers, sizes, and depth, so that all participants can see available liquidity before executing. Public centralized exchanges are the canonical lit venue type. Lit markets provide price discovery and transparency but expose large orders to information leakage, which is why institutional desks balance lit venue execution with dark pools, ATS venues, and OTC channels depending on order size and urgency.
Example
A small order for 10 ETH executes on a lit centralized exchange, filling immediately at the displayed best offer. A 500 ETH order is split: part routed to lit venues for immediate depth, part routed to dark venues to avoid signaling the full size.
How Liquid Mercury Handles This
Mercury Pro's SOR engine evaluates lit venue depth alongside dark and OTC liquidity in real time, routing each child order to the optimal venue mix based on size, urgency, and expected market impact.