Click time, send time, fill time

[Shadow Trader]

When a trade feels slow, it is useful to know which part is slow. There are really three timestamps: the moment of the click, the moment the order leaves the platform, and the moment the broker's confirmation comes back. The statement shows only the last, and only to the second on some platforms.

Between the click and the send, local factors matter: the computer, the platform, and other programs running at the same time. Between the send and the confirm, network distance and broker processing matter.

Rough numbers help. A VPS near the broker's data center might do the second leg in 5 to 30 milliseconds. A home connection across an ocean can take 150 to 300. Add 100 to 400 milliseconds of broker processing and the total wait can easily hit half a second.

For a target of one or two pips in a pair that moves several pips in a second during busy periods, that wait is a large part of the trade.

MT5 and some other platforms can show the execution time in milliseconds in the journal. If the platform provides it, plot the distribution rather than the average. The slow ten percent tells the real story.

A way to separate the legs: run a script or EA that records the time it sends the order, and compare that to the broker's open time in the trade history, which is stamped on the server. The gap is the network plus broker processing. Then compare the click time, from a screen recording, with the send time. That gap is the platform and the person.

Seeing the split often points to a surprising culprit, such as a slow platform rather than a slow connection.

What is the typical fill delay seen on your setup, and does it vary by time of day?

[Amanhasnoname]

I went through this exercise when my trades started feeling sluggish, and it turned out the problem wasn't where I expected. My connection to the broker's server was around 30 milliseconds, which seemed fine. But when I recorded my screen and compared the click with the send time in an EA log, the platform itself was taking up to a quarter of a second on busy mornings.

The cause was the number of charts and indicators I had open. I was running about fifteen charts, several with custom indicators recalculating on every tick, and when the market got fast the terminal just couldn't keep up. Cutting down to four charts brought the click to send gap below fifty milliseconds most of the time.

I agree completely about looking at the distribution rather than the average. My average fill time looked acceptable, but the slowest tenth of my orders were nearly all during data releases, and those were exactly the trades where the delay cost the most.