If you wanted to know how close HFT's are getting to nano seconds, check out this blog post. https://meanderful.blogspot.ca/2015/08/trade-system-performance-st

If you wanted to know how close HFT's are getting to nano seconds, check out this blog post. https://meanderful.blogspot.ca/2015/08/trade-system-performance-state-of-art.html https://meanderful.blogspot.ca/2015/08/trade-system-performa... Short answer below: Hardware Ho-hum < 2,000 ns Good < 500 ns Excellent < 100 ns Software: Ho-hum < 10,000 ns Good < 5,000 ns Excellent < 2,000 ns Man, I remember when I was proud to get trade times down below 1 milli second!