Measured data

The States One Order Passes Through, and Where It Stops Being Changeable — United Arab Emirates

Every row below belongs to an instruction that ran out of states: written, sent, confirmed, closed and filed, with nothing left to decide about any of it. Measured 2026.07.02 16:38.

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Between the press and the line in the record an instruction stands in a short sequence of states, and only the earliest of them still accepts a change. Once it has been handed over there is no state left to interrupt, and once it has become a position the word cancel no longer applies: what is available then is a second, opposite instruction, which ends the position rather than undoing it. Reading the state first settles the only question that matters — whether there is anything left to decide.

Every row below is an instruction that ran out of states

An instruction does not travel straight from a press to a line in the record. It stands, briefly, in a small number of named states, and each one carries a different answer to the same question: is there anything left to decide. The rows underneath are the end of that sequence — instructions that were sent, accepted, closed and filed, and are therefore finished. What the sequence looks like before that point, and where in it a change is still possible, is the subject of the rest of this page.

Execution speed and fill quality vary with market conditions, liquidity and position size.

Round-trips that reached the final state, by instrument and size

Instrument	Lot size	Avg execution	Slowest fill	Avg slippage (signed)	Better / zero / worse fills
EUR/USD	0.01	151 ms	187 ms	-0.3 pts	1 / 2 / 0
EUR/USD	0.1	151 ms	172 ms	-0.3 pts	1 / 2 / 0
EUR/USD	1	146 ms	172 ms	-0.3 pts	1 / 2 / 0
GBP/USD	0.01	141 ms	156 ms	+0.7 pts	0 / 1 / 2
GBP/USD	0.1	130 ms	140 ms	+0.0 pts	0 / 3 / 0
GBP/USD	1	135 ms	156 ms	+0.3 pts	0 / 2 / 1
XAU/USD (Gold)	0.01	141 ms	172 ms	+0.0 pts	0 / 3 / 0
XAU/USD (Gold)	0.1	151 ms	172 ms	+80.0 pts	1 / 1 / 1
XAU/USD (Gold)	1	130 ms	141 ms	-72.3 pts	2 / 1 / 0

Across 27 measured round-trips the average fill took 130–151 ms depending on instrument and size, with 0 rejected orders in total. Negative slippage means the fill was better than the quoted price at the moment the order was sent.

Slippage in points, signed: negative = filled better than quoted, positive = worse. ‘Rejects’ counts orders the platform refused at that size.

How these orders were sent and closed

Real market orders (buy, then immediate close) placed in an Exness MetaTrader 5 terminal.
Latency timed in-terminal from order send to broker confirmation.
Sizes stepped 0.01 → 1.00 lot to expose size-dependent slippage.
Fills depend on market liquidity, account and conditions, and can differ.

Measured in-terminal on Exness’s own MetaTrader 5 pricing feed and symbol specifications, refreshed on a schedule. All figures are indicative and change with market conditions.

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A state is a place, not an instant

An instruction is easier to think about as a place than as a moment. At any second it is standing somewhere: in the window where it is still being written, in the list of things waiting for a level, in the short handover between the platform and the venue, in the list of open positions, or in the record of finished lines. There is nowhere else for it to be.

Naming the places is worth the effort because each one answers the same question differently. In two of them a change costs nothing at all. In one of them a change is impossible because there is no interval in which to make it. In the last two a change is not a change at all but a fresh instruction carrying its own conditions.

This is also why a screen that appears to be doing nothing is usually not stuck. An instruction that has left one list and not yet arrived in the next is standing in the one state that has no list of its own, and the correct response to it is to wait for it to reappear rather than to press anything a second time.

The state where changing your mind costs nothing

An instruction waiting for a price to arrive is the most forgiving state there is. Nothing is open, nothing is exposed and no charge has been applied. The level can be moved, the size can be edited, and the whole thing can be withdrawn, leaving nothing behind except the fact that it was withdrawn.

The state is permissive because nobody has been asked to do anything yet. The condition written on the instruction has not been met, so the instruction has not been handed anywhere; it is being held on the side until the price reaches the level it names.

Everything expensive about changing your mind therefore belongs to the states after this one. A plan revised while it is still waiting is free. The same revision, one state later, is a second decision meeting a second moment, and it is priced accordingly.

The handover, and why there is nothing in it to interrupt

The stretch between sending and confirmation is the state people most often try to act in and the only one that cannot be acted in. It exists in order to be short: an instruction goes over, a reply comes back, and the gap between them was never built to hold a second instruction.

A press made during that gap stops nothing. It is a new instruction that arrives after the first has already been answered, and on a busy screen the ordinary result is two of whatever was wanted rather than none of it.

The rule that follows is about patience rather than technique. The confirmation is the signal that the state has changed, and until it appears the honest answer to the question of what can be done is nothing.

After the fill, cancel stops being the right word

Once an instruction has become an open position, no action removes it from the record. Closing is a fresh instruction in the opposite direction that ends the exposure, and it passes through exactly the same states the first one did: written, sent, confirmed, filed.

The record therefore keeps two lines rather than none. That is not untidiness in the record; it is what actually happened, and a record that erased the first line would be describing a different afternoon from the one that took place.

The distinction matters when the question is about cost rather than about neatness. Undoing implies a return to the state before the press, and no such return exists. Ending implies a second set of conditions at a second moment, and that is what a closing instruction actually meets.

Leaving a list is a change of state, not a loss

Most reports of a vanished order are reports of an ordinary transition. A waiting instruction leaves the waiting list at the moment its condition is met, because at that moment it has become something else, and looking for it where it used to be finds nothing.

The same holds at the other end of the sequence. A position that has been closed leaves the list of open positions and turns up in the record, and the short gap between those two events is why a screen can briefly show it in neither place.

Reading the lists in their sequence — waiting, then open, then finished — settles almost every one of these cases without anything being pressed. An instruction is always somewhere, and the sequence says where to look next.

Reading the state before deciding whether anything can still be done

Find which list the instruction is in. Waiting, open and finished are three different states, and what can be done differs in every one of them.
If it is waiting, treat it as fully editable. The level and the size can be changed and the instruction can be withdrawn outright, with nothing left behind.
If it is open, the decision to enter has already been taken. The only remaining act is a closing instruction, which is new rather than corrective.
If it is finished, there is nothing to act on. The line is the record of something that has already ended.
If it is in none of the three, it is between states. Wait for it to appear rather than pressing again, because a second press is a second instruction and not a cancellation.

The order of the list matters more than its length: the first question decides which of the other four is even worth asking.

Where an instruction stands, and what can still be done with it

State	Where it appears	What is still possible
Still being written	Only in the order window	Everything; closing the window leaves no trace
Waiting for a level	The list of pending instructions	Move the level, edit the size, or withdraw it entirely
Handed over	Briefly in no list at all	Nothing; the gap is too short to hold a second instruction
Accepted as an open position	The list of open positions	Only a closing instruction, which is a new decision
Finished	The record of completed lines	Nothing; the line describes something that has ended

Only two of the five states accept a change, and both of them sit before anything has been handed over.

What the word cancel means in each state

Where cancel is pressed	What it actually does	What the record keeps
On a waiting instruction	Withdraws it before it becomes anything else	A withdrawn instruction and no position
During the handover	Arrives after the reply and becomes a second instruction	Whatever the first instruction produced, possibly twice
On an open position	Sends an opposite instruction that ends the exposure	Two lines: the entry and the exit
On a finished line	Nothing at all	The line, unchanged

The word keeps its everyday meaning in the first row only; in the others it describes an action with a different result.

Frequently asked questions

Where exactly is the last point at which an order can still be called back?

At the end of the waiting state. While an instruction is still waiting for a level it can be moved, resized or withdrawn without leaving a position behind. Once it has been handed over that option has gone, and what remains is a closing instruction rather than a withdrawal.

An order disappeared from the pending list. Was it lost?

Almost never. Leaving the pending list is what a waiting instruction does when its condition is met: it becomes an open position and appears in a different list. Reading the lists in sequence, waiting then open then finished, locates it.

Can an order sent for immediate handling be cancelled after the press?

No. That state exists in order to be short, and there is no interval inside it in which a second instruction could arrive in time. A press made during it is treated as a new instruction, not as a stop.

Why does closing a position leave a second line instead of removing the first?

Because closing ends a position rather than undoing it. The entry happened and the record says so; the exit is a separate act at a separate moment, and both are written down.

The instruction is in neither the pending list nor the open list. What now?

It is between states, which is the one condition with no list of its own. The useful response is to wait for the confirmation, because pressing again while it is in transit is the reliable way to end up with two positions.

Does editing a waiting instruction count as placing a new one?

In terms of these states, no. Nothing has been handed over, so a change to the level or the size is a change to something that has not yet acted. The distinction only starts to matter after the handover.

Is the state visible anywhere other than the list it sits in?

The list is the plainest marker there is. A confirmation marks the move from one state to the next and the record marks the last one; between those two signals, the list an instruction appears in is the state it is in.

If almost nothing can be undone, what is the point of naming the states?

So that effort goes to the moment where it still changes the outcome. Nearly all of the freedom in the sequence sits before the handover, which moves the thinking earlier rather than spending it on a state where no action is available.