What happens after you click
Your order travels to the broker's server, is matched against available liquidity and returns a confirmation. Total round-trip time is typically measured in tens of milliseconds; price can move within that window.
Slippage, positive and negative
Slippage is symmetric in a fair execution model: you sometimes get a better price than requested. Persistent one-sided slippage over hundreds of trades is the signal worth investigating, not any single fill.
Reducing avoidable losses
Use limit orders when the entry level matters more than immediate fill, avoid market orders in the seconds around scheduled releases, and use a VPS near the broker's server if you run automated strategies.
- Limit orders where price precision matters
- No market orders through high-impact data
- VPS hosting for automated systems
- Track your own average slippage over 100+ trades