Every millisecond between a master’s trade and the slave’s fill is an opportunity for the price to move against you. In copy trading, latency is not an abstract concern—it directly impacts your bottom line.
What is copy-trading latency?
It is the total time from when the master’s order fills to when the slave’s order fills. This includes detection time, network transit, rule processing, order dispatch, and broker execution. MirrorLink optimises each stage to keep the total under 200 ms in most cases.
How slippage compounds
Suppose each copied trade experiences 0.5 pips of slippage due to latency. On 200 trades per month at $10 per pip, that is $1,000 of drag. Over a year, latency-driven slippage alone can consume 10–15% of gross returns. Faster execution is not a luxury—it is an economic necessity.
| Latency tier | Avg slippage per trade | Annual drag (200 trades/mo) |
|---|---|---|
| < 200 ms | ~0.1 pips | ~$2,400 |
| 200–500 ms | ~0.3 pips | ~$7,200 |
| 1–3 seconds | ~0.8 pips | ~$19,200 |
| 5+ seconds (polling) | ~1.5 pips | ~$36,000 |
Where latency hides
- Detection: Polling-based copiers add 1–5 seconds here. MirrorLink’s WebSocket stream eliminates this.
- Processing: Complex rule evaluation with database queries adds tens of milliseconds. MirrorLink evaluates rules in-memory.
- Broker execution: Your broker’s fill speed is outside MirrorLink’s control, but choosing an ECN or STP broker with low-latency infrastructure helps.
- Cross-platform translation: Converting MT5 order types to cTrader equivalents takes a few milliseconds. MirrorLink pre-caches symbol mappings to keep this fast.
Practical tips to minimise latency
- Use brokers with servers geographically close to MirrorLink’s infrastructure.
- Keep your route rules simple—fewer conditions means faster evaluation.
- Avoid trading during extreme volatility spikes (e.g., first 30 seconds after NFP) when broker fill times spike.
- Monitor the Logs page for execution timestamps. If you see consistent delays above 500 ms, investigate your broker’s fill speed.