Trading Latency

Definition

Trading latency represents the temporal interval between the initiation of an order signal and its subsequent acknowledgment or execution within a financial exchange environment. This duration encompasses the time required for data transmission across network layers, the processing speed of the matching engine, and the propagation of order updates back to the participant. In high-frequency environments, even microsecond delays can lead to adverse selection, where an investor interacts with stale market data, resulting in suboptimal fill prices.