Your clock is probably off by a second or two

[Fairman]

Your clock is probably off by a second or two

A release at 13:30:00 GMT. The platform clock says 13:29:58. The trader clicks, thinking there are two seconds to spare. The market has already moved on the exchange's clock.

Computer clocks drift, and platform server clocks have their own offset. Even a one-second error is large in a news context. Orders sent relative to the platform's clock may arrive before or after the release by more than the time budget.

Syncing the PC clock with a network time source is easy. The harder part is knowing the platform server's offset from true time. Comparing the server timestamp on a trade with a reliable time source over several trades reveals it.

Some brokers' server clocks run slightly fast or slow, which affects any time-based logic in expert advisors, including trade-at-time-X scripts.

It sounds trivial. For a strategy that fires within seconds of an event, it is the difference between profit and a bad fill.

Has anyone checked the actual offset between the platform clock and a reliable time source?