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Latency guide

What trading latency actually means.

Latency is not a trading word made complicated. It is just delay. The question is where the delay happens and whether the delay changes enough to matter.

In plain English, latency is the time between your action and the broker receiving it. That is the number the market charges you for when timing matters.

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Latency
Delay between action and receipt.
Jitter
How much that delay changes.
Impact
Late packets arrive at the wrong price.

Why the delay exists

Your trade does not travel in a straight line. It crosses your device, your local network, your ISP, and a series of intermediate hops before it reaches the broker. Every step adds some amount of delay.

That is normal. The problem is not that delay exists. The problem is that the delay can grow or wobble at the exact moment you want a clean fill.

Why the difference matters

Latency on its own is a number. Latency plus jitter is the version traders feel. A route that stays around the same timing feels calmer. A route that swings around feels unreliable, even when the average looks okay.

That is why the connection path sits in the middle of the story. You are not trying to eliminate physics. You are trying to keep the path from adding avoidable delay.

Three useful checks
  • Does the path feel slower when the app reconnects?
  • Does the delay change more under load than in a quiet session?
  • Does a cleaner route feel steadier than the direct one?
Simple test

Latency is the delay. The route decides how much of it you can live with.

Every trade passes through a chain: your device, the local network, the ISP, the broker, and the response coming back. Each hop adds delay, and that delay gets noticed most when the market is fast or the app is waking up.

What traders usually want is not a perfect number. They want a path that stays predictable enough to avoid unnecessary slippage, slow logins, or late reactions.

  • Check whether the delay is worse after the app wakes from sleep.
  • Check whether a cleaner route feels steadier than the direct one.
  • Check whether the problem is delay alone, or delay plus wobble.
FAQ

It is the delay between the moment you click or send a command and the moment the broker receives it.

No. Latency is the delay itself. Jitter is how much that delay changes from one moment to the next.

Because a delayed order arrives later than you intended. In fast markets, that can change the fill, the entry, or the reconnect experience.