I'm sure this has come up before, but who are considered the fastest brokers for automated equity trading? I'm currently with IB but I think there is faster out there. Any suggestions?
What are you willing to pay to be faster(Rhetorical question)? If you co-locate at NY4 and cross connect to our OMS/FIX connection, that would be faster then a desktop API. The cost of co-locating is very high. Just the cross connect is $500/month.
With FXCM, Tradestation and IB as well, I use speedytradingservers for a VPS ($80/month for my config). For equities, they probably are not the fastest since they are in NJ (still better than Florida!). For futures, they are in Chicago down town. I don't have any incentive from them, I just like the service for the price. I am sure you can find better and faster.
I don't understand the logic, why using your own server make it faster? It makes no sense, even you can use your server to replace IB's server, I don't think you can beat theirs.
You would not replace IB servers. You would become closer to them. If you trade at 4000 miles from IB servers like me, or if your internet access is not great (sat, old router, etc...) your order will just make more time to reach you broker servers. Obviously, speed is important for automated trading (slippage). http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/ping-ib-server.276055/ Open a command prompt on Windows, and ping 208.245.107.3 then, take a look at the speed in ms. From my home in Florida, it is between 55 and 65 depending of the time of the day, which is not that bad, and I have an High Speed internet access. From my VPS provider, I never saw anything more than 21ms.
I seem to get it, you were talking about automated trading and the script will be running on your server. That makes sense.
I understand that automated trading systems allow for faster order entry but if you already with IB and has tried it then you might as well stick to it.