Hello, on the forums I often see people mentioning that the “order execution speed” of the brokers being important then they post comparisons mentioning that x broker has 151ms execution speed while y broker has 532ms speed etc…
I have been trying to use metatrader 4 demo from various brokers now but when I place a trade the time stamp next to the order is in the hh:mm:ss format, without the ms.
Since most of the trade seems to finish in less than second I cannot tell precisely how much time it takes to process an order with those brokers from my location.
Could someone please explain how they get more precise measure of the “order execution speed” please?
Thank you
Oh is that an option for brokers only ? if not would you mind telling me where is that option that allows you to check order execution lag please?
I’ m not sure yet how I m going to proceed but i think would still be nice to know how everyone else can find out about those numbers.
You could use something like wireshark and get it to monitor your internet interface and pick up the packets that come to and from metatrader when executing orders. I tend to agree with mastergunner99 though it’s barely worth the effort and there are so many variables - client side/isp/server side. Measuring it inside metatrader itself would be pointless.
I make the assumption going into a trade that there is slippage and lag. But for me it’s truly a moot point. I trade on daily charts with limit orders.
What is the overall concern? Are you scalping on tick charts or something?
Well to be honest as a beginner, I m trying a few methods with different demo accounts at the moment while learning to see which suits me best but probably because I lack experience my planning is horrible at the moment.
Although the profit isn’t great, the account I use when scalping seems to work better for me than the accounts I use with other longer term methods at the moment.
But unfortunately in the blink of an eye, the profit can go away if the trade isn’t initiated fast.
So I would like to have more chances on my side by finding a broker that executes orders faster from my location.
You could try finding a vps close to your broker’s servers. I don’t think broker’s invest that much in their demo servers in comparison to their live servers. You will have to deal with slippage and re-quotes from time to time when you go live. I trade live on shorter TF’s (15/30 min) The difference between running mt4 on my home pc’s internet connection and the vps I use is huge.
Thank you for the advices, I m just using the basic version of mt4 at the moment but it certainly would help if I could do most of the orders in a single key press. Do you know of any metatrader 4 script that would do that?
About the vps I have heard that they were for automated trade but I m doing my trades manually at the moment, does having a vps actually help for manual trade as well ?
I don’t know of any script for mt4 that does keybinding/macro work(though I imagine one exists), I’ve used general windows macro programs like autoithotkey which can eliminate a of lot clicking through dialogs so I know it can be definitely done that way. In terms of vps, I trade through my vps for a couple of reason. My internet is a 3G connection, I use trailing stops when I goto work/sleep - so I need metatrader open and connected reliably to the internet. Data centers in general are pretty much on the backbone of the internet so the speeds will usually outperform any domestic internet connection(plus you have the less power outages etc…) It’s an option you can probably look into later when you have found a strategy you are happy with. They are reasonably cheap (for me usually 1 hour of bad trading to cover the month LOL)
Order execution matters when you are using EA s. For manual longer term traders execution speed is not that important.
To measure broker trade execution speed you have to program EA what measures trade execution speed.After EA executes the trade and has that measurement built into the code already. In an EA, before each command you want to measure in milliseconds (so for example sending of an order), you put:
int LastTime=GetTickCount();
… your command
Print("Previous Command Execution Time in ms: "+GetTickCount()-LastTime);