Execution speed tests/ network latencies ...

[atharmian]

Hi All,

A (belated) happy new 2014 from downtown Toronto !

On FF roicool's 2012 threads he posted some execution measurement tools.

1. Is there a tool/script to measure total round trip execution buy/sell times with a DEMO account? (roicool's posts suggest his stuff works with live trading.) In any case, his stuff may be redundant with Empty4 Build 563 and is a load on the broker's server.

By total I mean including the network latency: the time it takes from the mouse click on BUY/SELL button to when your trade executes and its notification arrives.

I am doing some research into reducing network latency on (usually bad) international location connections, given poor local ISP speeds/latency.

Maybe there is a way to reduce such latency down to a good 200-250 msec from the ridiculous 600 msec round trip latencies experienced from abroad. A case in point is online gamers from abroad (Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, others) whereby they can subscribe to LAN emulation or Split TCP Proxy services like Tunngle.net to get better QoS (quality of service.)

Reducing high network latencies can certainly improve trading since your trade will execute before price moves a lot, especially in active UK/US sessions. Of course even in North America, there is a lot of traffic shaping/throttling going on to let premium paid traffic pass first. Until recently vpn type traffic made sense because encrypted traffic was automatically prioritized by default but there then always is the unnecessary encryption overhead (more with PPTP than say with L2TP.) Lately though network providers are getting smarter with port assignments.


Your views/suggestions are welcome.

Cheers,
Athar.

[kwanann]

I dunno, does it really matter so much? That few pips?

[atharmian]

For scalpers, even a pip or two can matter a lot ! Remember, in a bad case of latency, they will just keep losing those pips on every trade as if they were added commissions.

Athar.

I dunno, does it really matter so much? That few pips?

[eigenvector]

In that FF thread starting with post #105, the paradigm may be changing and soon the need to manually keep a trading connection open to Empty4 may be obsolete. Empty4 may fix this problem internally with a new build. So I wouldn't spend a ton of time on this just monitor for new developments.

[garyfritz]

For scalpers, even a pip or two can matter a lot ! Remember, in a bad case of latency, they will just keep losing those pips on every trade as if they were added commissions.

Which is precisely why I don't touch scalpers. They ride a knife-edge of profitability. Any minor change to the environment -- slippage, latency, etc -- can turn a winner into a loser. And since they trade so fast/often, those small losses can really add up. I prefer systems that aren't so fragile.