Vietnamese traders are obsessed with the speed of execution. They’ll literally switch brokers for a 50 millisecond gap in order filling. It doesn’t matter if the platform is good, spreads are tight, or support speaks Vietnamese. Slow execution? They’re gone.
The obsession with execution speed here is next level. Traders will test a broker by placing tiny trades just to measure how fast orders fill. They share screenshots in trading groups showing millisecond differences between brokers like it’s some kind of competition. A broker that’s consistently 100 milliseconds slower than competitors might as well not exist in this market.
What’s funny is how this plays out in reality. Vietnamese internet infrastructure is all over the place. Someone in District 1 in Saigon might have fiber optic getting perfect execution, while a trader in the Mekong Delta deals with connection drops every few minutes. But both blame the broker when trades don’t execute instantly. The broker could have servers in Singapore running at light speed, but if your local connection is bad, none of that matters.
The whole thing started when high-frequency trading stories from Wall Street filtered down to retail traders here. Everyone heard about firms making millions from being microseconds faster, and suddenly every small trader thinks execution speed is why they’re not profitable. You’ll see someone trading with $500 talking about latency optimization like they’re running a hedge fund. It’s wild.
Mobile trading made the speed obsession even worse. People expect their trades to execute instantly on their phones while riding the bus using cellular data. When there’s any delay, they assume the forex broker is scamming them or giving better speeds to bigger accounts. The paranoia is real. Trading groups are full of conspiracy theories about brokers intentionally slowing down profitable traders.
Brokers responded by marketing speed above everything else. Every forex broker in Vietnam now advertises “lightning-fast execution” or “ultra-low latency” even when they’re all using the same liquidity providers. It’s mostly marketing nonsense, but traders eat it up. They’ll switch to a new broker promising 50 millisecond faster execution without realizing their own internet adds 200 milliseconds of delay.
The reality is most Vietnamese traders don’t need the execution speeds they think they need. If you’re holding positions for hours or days, a few hundred milliseconds won’t change anything. But try explaining that to someone who just lost money on a trade. They’ll always blame execution speed rather than their strategy or timing.
Scalpers and news traders legitimately care about speed though. When big announcements hit, prices move fast and every millisecond actually matters. These traders will pay extra for VPS hosting near broker servers, use multiple internet connections, anything to shave off latency. For them, execution speed directly impacts profitability.
The testing methods traders use are hilarious. They’ll open accounts with five different brokers, place the same trade on all of them simultaneously, then compare which one filled first. Never mind that they’re clicking buttons manually, with human reaction times varying by entire seconds. They think they’re running scientific experiments.
Server location became this huge talking point. Brokers started advertising their server locations like it’s a major selling point. “Servers in Equinix Singapore!” as if most traders understand what that means. But mention you have servers in New York or London, and Vietnamese traders immediately assume you’ll be slow for Asian markets.
What really matters for execution reliability here isn’t pure speed but consistency. Vietnamese traders prefer a broker that’s consistently 200 milliseconds rather than one that’s usually 100 milliseconds but sometimes spikes to 2 seconds. Those random delays during volatile times kill trust immediately. One bad execution during an important trade and that trader is gone forever.
There is a tremendous psychological factor involved as well. The speed of execution allows the trader the sensation that they are in control, that the market is reacting instantly to their command. Slow execution causes tension, second guessing, and panic positions closed. Speed isn’t only a matter of money, it’s a matter of confidence too.
Some brokers tried educating traders about what really affects execution, explaining spread importance versus raw speed, or how slippage works. Total waste of time. Traders don’t want education, they want to hear their broker is the fastest. Period.So that’s what every forex broker in Vietnam promises now, whether it’s true or not.
