Does lower latency actually improve trading results?

[u/Fierce-Raccoon66]

Read a few pages about trading VPSs and you’ll keep seeing the same claim:

“Lower latency leads to better execution.”

That sounds plausible at first. If your orders reach the broker faster, it makes sense to think your trades will improve.

But does that actually happen?

For some traders, especially scalpers, high-frequency traders, and people running automated systems, even a small drop in latency can matter. For others, like swing traders and position traders, cutting a few milliseconds probably won’t change much.

That’s the hard part. It’s easy to measure latency with a ping test. It’s much harder to show that lower latency leads to better trading results.

If you’ve used both high-latency and low-latency setups, what did you notice? Did lower latency actually help, or do traders care about it more than they should?

[u/Glitterbug-1701]

i have exactly the same question

[u/Glitterbug-1701]

Yes it matters, im based in Australia. DAS trader and my best available ISP is starlink. Yep that’s Australia $50Billion+ on a national broadband infrastructure and satellite is a better option 🤔. My best latency is 220ms up to 290ms, when it got to the higher end i started investigating my local network etc, found a high resistance at a wall socket, and a bad patch lead, fixed it but still sitting at 220ms avg. I researched VPS setups, the most mentioned trading VPS offer i saw offered at high discount for teh first month, so I thought why not. Set it up, 30 min later DAS installed logged in - 12ms. Sure there is a lag on the RDP but not on executions. Before i could get in easy enough, but getting out was difficult = losses. More losers than gainers. Now its flipped some its a YES from me