Hello, Does anyone have any experience trading NYSE or Nasdaq from Asia? I heard that the execution is significantly slower if you are trading from China than if you were trading from the US. Any experiences people have trading from far away, anywhere, not just Asia, would be appreciated. I always assumed the speed would be dependant on internet speed not on distance from NY. Thanks
Why don't you do a speed test from speedtest.net and see what you pings are to cities where you trade? I was just in Europe and to Chicago with good cable connection was 200 ms not bad at all IMO for such a good distance. You are wrong though read up on ping, latency, internet hops and such. Most are incorrect though as well. The focus on bandwidth available and not ping latency which is a big factor. I have much fewer, most likely, than you do since now I am back in Denver. You can also download a free program called ping plotter that will show you the actual route.
It probabbly is if Chinese Internet is still filtered. You can't rely on government-imposed filters to be efficiently implemented. If you have a broker now, I would suggest placing a limit order way out of the market (so, it's not accidentally executed) and time how long it takes till the order is confirmed. With exchange-traded securities you should be able to ensure that the confirmation doesn't come before the order has successfully been placed with the exchange. If your broker has local office they probabbly use it to route the orders via a dedicated line (which is not subject to usual bottle necks) directly to the US. So, the delays may be minimal. I would suggest to check with the broker first.
I've been trading from Singapore and there's no problem accessing US servers even though distance is ~9850 miles away. Ping times to a local (Singapore) server is 26-44ms but ping times to a Texas server is 220-300ms. I am using TradeStation broker/platform and had used RealTick software some years ago and also quite workable. The power trading or Java software from E*TRADE and TDAmeritrade also connects well even though >9000 miles.
No, it doesn't. OP - Depending on your situation I woulud suggest a number of things. Are you manually trading or auto trading. Obviously if you are auto-trading I'd suggest co-lo in NYC. Many people who talk about "fast" internet connections don't seem to understand the difference between latency and bandwidth. You need a bit of both but mostly latency. Since you never let us know what you are trading and how important execution speed is no one can really help you. Earlier in my career I worked with a few prop firms/funds that used to trade the NYSE/CBOE from Hong Kong and more recently I have some experience with pricing ADRs. Send me a PM if you don't want to talk openly about your situation. My experience with HK may be very different since you are asking about within the walls of China. Speed and latency may or may not be an issue at all for you.