I dont know. I use the colony management screen, where you can sort your planets by a bunch of different ways. I find doing a lot of things from that screen to be very convenient.

Sentient species taste better...

IIRC, people used to complain that the list didn't update to reflect changes so the devs added the behavior. On my old, sub-spec machine I found the list did take many seconds to load in late game (50-200 worlds). On the Vista box I began suffering last August, things are pretty sweet and I like the fact that it updates when I do something like add an improvment to a world that had been building nothing.

But your question reminds me of a very longstanding UI wish of mine: that the "next whatever" keys in all contexts would use the last relevant sort choice you'd made, whether it was in the Colonies list or the mini-list.

My best guess for how the order works now is that the game goes by some sort of GUID that's invisible to players.

I used to do this as I colonized planets, but it got where it just slowed me more on a game that was going to take me two months to play anyway. I also use the z/x keys to navigate mass buying on large maps, though I see no rhyme or reason in what is next as it just jumps randomly around the map.

On my older machine it can take the Colony list a minute and a half just to come up and then the 15 to 20 second delay after I hit accept along side the reset to the top thing on a buy makes it unusable.