As others have said, if you're using the mouse, latency isn't a problem (assuming it's half decent). Also, have you considered changing to IB's Euro server? I think they have one in London and probably Germany, maybe more.
you can always send buy and sell orders simultaneously to different geographical exchanges and use the latency to your advantage to obtain less latency than anyone can get using hardware alone. this is real hft.
I am connected to IB's UK server. But for trading US products they, too, have to get data from the exchanges from across the ocean, so am I correct to be taking the latency to IB US as benchmark?
Personally, I wouldn't bother with latency concerns unless they are extreme, and maybe not even then... by that I mean measured in SECONDS, not MS. With prices fluctuating noisily as they do, you don't know whether the next tick or two will be up or down.... whether it will help or hurt your fill by a penny or two. Besides, you can't "see a trade and click the mouse" fast enough to make a difference that might be influenced by latency. Over time and a number of trades, any "latency randomness" should even out. If you perceive your success being influenced by latency, you're "fishin' in a dry hole" anyway.
smaller is better, because it adds to your own clicking thought speed, but 120 is fine unless your proper scalping for a tick or 2 I guess.
few minutes to half an hour is not right, some brokers and data feed have this issue, CQG rarely to never, you might consider switch. I had this issue with Gain Capital's data feed. Transferred out since.
You specify the latency from the internet connection. But you forgot to mention that IB does not send every tick to your TWS. They aggregate ticks and send you an update every 250 ms (forex: 50 ms). This will add to the combined latency.
Ah, yes, I now remember reading about that, thanks They do mention that there is a distinction between market data and tick by tick, and the latter is available in the time&sales window starting with TWS v969. https://interactivebrokers.github.io/tws-api/top_data.html In any case, to broaden my perspective, do you have any recommended alternatives for affordable tick streaming data? I have seen IQfeed mentioned in another post.