Where the Wait Starts: The Part of Execution That Never Leaves Your Desk — Lesotho
Everything below the click happens before an order reaches anyone else: the window has to respond, the processor has to be free enough to notice, and the local connection has to carry it out of the building.
Open Exness Account →A click is not the beginning of an order, it is the middle of one. Before anything leaves the machine the window has to respond to the press, the program has to be given processor time to act on it, and the local connection has to carry it outward. None of that stretch belongs to the venue at the other end, none of it appears in a figure measured there, and it is the only part of the wait a desk can shorten by itself.
What the figures below do and do not cover
The table underneath describes the stretch that begins once an instruction has left the machine it was typed on. It says nothing about the stretch before that, which is entirely local: the window has to redraw, the processor has to be free enough to register the click, and the local connection has to accept the outbound request. That earlier stretch belongs to the desk, is invisible to any measurement taken at the other end, and is the only part a workspace can actually change.
Execution speed and fill quality vary with market conditions, liquidity and position size.
Measured round-trips by instrument and size
| Instrument | Lot size | Avg execution | Slowest fill | Avg slippage (signed) | Better / zero / worse fills | Rejects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EUR/USD | 0.01 | 151 ms | 187 ms | -0.3 pts | 1 / 2 / 0 | 0 |
| EUR/USD | 0.1 | 151 ms | 172 ms | -0.3 pts | 1 / 2 / 0 | 0 |
| EUR/USD | 1 | 146 ms | 172 ms | -0.3 pts | 1 / 2 / 0 | 0 |
| GBP/USD | 0.01 | 141 ms | 156 ms | +0.7 pts | 0 / 1 / 2 | 0 |
| GBP/USD | 0.1 | 130 ms | 140 ms | +0.0 pts | 0 / 3 / 0 | 0 |
| GBP/USD | 1 | 135 ms | 156 ms | +0.3 pts | 0 / 2 / 1 | 0 |
| XAU/USD (Gold) | 0.01 | 141 ms | 172 ms | +0.0 pts | 0 / 3 / 0 | 0 |
| XAU/USD (Gold) | 0.1 | 151 ms | 172 ms | +80.0 pts | 1 / 1 / 1 | 0 |
| XAU/USD (Gold) | 1 | 130 ms | 141 ms | -72.3 pts | 2 / 1 / 0 | 0 |
Across 27 measured round-trips the average fill took 130–151 ms depending on instrument and size, with 0 rejected orders in total. Negative slippage means the fill was better than the quoted price at the moment the order was sent.
Slippage in points, signed: negative = filled better than quoted, positive = worse. ‘Rejects’ counts orders the platform refused at that size.
How this was measured
- Real market orders (buy, then immediate close) placed in an Exness MetaTrader 5 terminal.
- Latency timed in-terminal from order send to broker confirmation.
- Sizes stepped 0.01 → 1.00 lot to expose size-dependent slippage.
- Fills depend on market liquidity, account and conditions, and can differ.
Measured in-terminal on Exness’s own MetaTrader 5 pricing feed and symbol specifications, refreshed on a schedule. All figures are indicative and change with market conditions.
Open Exness Account →Three things happen on your side before anything is sent
The first is drawing. A window that is busy redrawing twenty charts is a window that responds to a press a moment later than an idle one, and on a machine near its limit that moment is not small. It is also entirely self-inflicted, which is the good news.
The second is scheduling. A program only acts when the processor gives it a turn, and it shares those turns with everything else running — a browser with thirty tabs, an update installing itself, a video playing in the corner. The third is the local link: the first stretch of a connection out of a building is usually the slowest and the most variable stretch of it.
Why this part is invisible to any figure taken elsewhere
A measurement taken at the receiving end begins when something arrives there. Anything that happened before arrival is outside the window being measured, so a desk with a slow local stretch and a desk with a fast one produce identical figures at the far end while feeling completely different to use.
This is worth knowing mainly so that the two are not confused. A number describing the far end is a fact about the far end; the experience of pressing a button is a fact about the room you are sitting in, and improving one does not move the other.
What a workspace can actually change
The levers are unglamorous and they are all local. Fewer open charts and fewer indicators leave the window free to respond. Closing whatever else is competing for the processor does the same. A wired connection instead of a shared wireless one removes the most variable stretch of the local path.
None of this is a claim about outcomes and none of it is worth chasing beyond the point where the desk feels responsive. The reason to do it is narrower: it is the portion of the wait that is yours, so it is the portion that responds to anything you do.