Screen refresh rate and the trade you saw too late
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 7:27 am
Most monitors refresh sixty times per second, which is fast enough for any chart. But the display is only one link in a chain of delays: feed to platform, platform to screen, screen to eye, eye to hand, hand to mouse, mouse to server.
Each step adds some milliseconds, and together they can reach half a second or more. For a scalper working with tight targets, that delay matters.
Some elements are controllable. A wired connection, a modern monitor with a quick response time, and a clean desktop with few background programs all help. Others, like human reaction time, are fixed.
It is more productive to design around the delay than to fight it. Order types that remove the need for speed, such as limit orders at planned levels, work better than trying to catch a price that is already gone.
A simple test is to time how long it takes to respond to a visible change on screen, using a reaction test tool, then compare it with the typical duration of a move.
Which part of your setup do you think adds the most delay, and have you ever measured it?
Each step adds some milliseconds, and together they can reach half a second or more. For a scalper working with tight targets, that delay matters.
Some elements are controllable. A wired connection, a modern monitor with a quick response time, and a clean desktop with few background programs all help. Others, like human reaction time, are fixed.
It is more productive to design around the delay than to fight it. Order types that remove the need for speed, such as limit orders at planned levels, work better than trying to catch a price that is already gone.
A simple test is to time how long it takes to respond to a visible change on screen, using a reaction test tool, then compare it with the typical duration of a move.
Which part of your setup do you think adds the most delay, and have you ever measured it?