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If 1 second can cause so much of havoc, I am wondering, to what precision are the servers in markets synchronized?

Are they made in a distributed fashion where it is assumed that two clocks can never be synchronized with full precision.

PS - I am a noob in markets and trading.

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Clock sync is one of the areas where the markets and their participants actually deserve their reputation for sophistication.

That said, I'd be surprised if keeping the clocks together is what is causing the worry. Much more troubling are third party bugs (kernel, jvm, db, etc) and incorrect assumptions in their code.

This same story can be equally applied to any industry honestly, but the markets make for better headlines.

GPS + PTP +- < 1us

GPS + NTP +- 12us

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