The Value of a Millisecond

From a Tabb Group report on latency:

For US equity electronic trading brokerage, handling the speed of the market is of critical importance because latency impedes a broker’s ability to provide best execution. In 2008, 16% of all US institutional equity commissions are exposed to latency risk, totaling $2B in revenue. As in the Indy 500, the value of time for a trading desk is decidedly non-linear. TABB Group estimates that if a broker’s electronic trading platform is 5 milliseconds behind the competition, it could lose at least 1% of its flow; that’s $4 million in revenues per millisecond. Up to 10 milliseconds of latency could result in a 10% drop in revenues. From there it gets worse. If a broker is 100 milliseconds slower than the fastest broker, it may as well shut down its FIX engine and become a floor broker.