Conflation: when the platform skips ticks to keep up

[Shadow Trader]

During a burst of activity, a feed might send fifty updates in a second. A platform or server may deliver only the latest one every hundred milliseconds, dropping the rest. That's conflation, and it is common on retail setups, usually for stability.

The chart still looks smooth. The missing ticks are invisible. For anyone who trades off tick data or builds indicators from it, the picture is incomplete exactly when it matters most.

Effects show up in several places. Spike highs and lows get clipped, since the extreme tick may be one of those dropped. Tick counts understate real activity. Backtests on full tick data overstate what a live feed would have shown.

A way to check is recording ticks on the live platform and comparing the count with a data vendor's count for the same minute. A persistent shortfall during fast periods suggests conflation.

Some platforms allow adjusting how the feed behaves, and some brokers offer a "full tick" option on request.

Has a live tick count ever been compared with a vendor's, and how large was the difference?