Apologize for opening a new thread, maybe the answer to my question is nested somewhere in the forum but I was not able to find it.
How REALLY important is for a DISCRETIONARY trader the latency of the datafeed (including orderflow traders)?
Is it a decisive factor only for algorithmic trading?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on futures io?
Unless you're trading from the Moon (1.3 seconds latency) or Mars (4 to 21 minutes latency) it won't matter much in your case.
The human reaction time alone is around 250 ms.
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So when I read in various telegram chat a lot of orderflow traders saying that they need their data feed accurate to the millisecond, these guys are basically showing off?
If the information they get from their orderflow become inaccurate with wrong timestamps/aggregated data then why not, but the human response time will be in seconds anyway.
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normally when one goes for Orderflow it is a very short term oriented style of trading based on quick action taken. This is my assumption...
try several software packages in combination with different data feeds.
There is a visible difference
....also depending on your country and location of the marketīs datacenter...
I am located in Europe.
When using IQFeed on the DOM it is visibly slower than RIthmic or TT.
And when trading an US market, I am behind.
Especially at busy internet hours and/or there is pretty busy market activity.
When you now leave 1-2 tick, or even more, every time on the table this, of course, adds up...especially with the rising number of contracts you trade
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Hmm, I don't see how it's possible: in the worst case IQFeed will be 30ms or so slower than Rithmic/TT, an human eye/brain can't easily detect it. Unless you're not human?
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Yeah besides that, it's not obvious if it's IQFeed or TT/Rithmic that's "wrong" in this case since neither is a universal reference for "correct data". Both of them could be wrong.
The "cheapest" way you can tell is to use CME Direct, which is actually a pretty amazing options trading platform with awesome data for its low price that I'd recommend for anything 1 trade per hour and slower, but even CME Direct has network delay.
If @asyx really wants to know which one is wrong, he/she will need some pretty sophisticated infrastructure or a clever placement algorithm paired with Firmsoft.
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In first person shooter games I often monitor my latency and I know how many milliseconds is too much to be accurate and competitive. It is probably less pronounced in gaming than it would be for trading due to predictive algorithms they use to attempt to sync the gameplay of people with varying latencies as much as possible.
So for gaming (shooters specifically):
40ms and less - i can't detect lag
70ms - I detect minor lag
>100ms - lag is annoying but I can deal with it
>150ms - big delay, can't play competitively
If you are watching the DOM update in real time to time your trades and your finger is always on the trigger, I would be concerned about latency. If you are trading news, I would be concerned. If a 2 second delay doesn't change anything for your entries, then who cares.
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