Since Trading is 24/7 for 5 1/2 days, does everyone see the same data that I see?
When is the open and close price info set and who sets it? How can someone in Japan see what I am seeing in New York ? Comfusing to me. Does it matter?
Thanks for explanation.
Westover35
Not exactly… Price feeds depend on the broker but are typically accurate to within a few pips though they can be drastically different between brokers at times. Also, the timezone the broker’s servers are in have an effect on the candles such as daily candles. They can open/close at different times giving different open and close values (sometimes highs and lows as well).
Whoever has the same broker as you is probably seeing the same thing but someone with a different broker could be seeing things a little differently.
If you’re using the same broker, then yes. Othewise generally yes if you’re using a different broker but on the same timezone.
A different broker on a different timezone? Usually it’s different.
For example, right now on my fxopen platform, the timezone is GMT +3. This is different from say Ibfx, who are GMT. So here, you will see different candles for timeframes such as H4.
Technically, yes. However, you might see an evening star formation, and the other trader might see a dark cloud cover, very close to the same sell signal.
Yes, there won’t be major differences, true.
Hello.
Well I’d not go so far as to say that there won’t be major differences??? It depends on how far apart the the timezones are from each other and therefore the daily and four hours charts can be VERY different. I still have a live account open with a broker that closes their daily charts on New Your time (no money in it i.e. it was the very first ‘scum bucket lowlife buketshop’ broker that I traded with when I was ‘green behind the ears’) and we (Deltastock) close the daily charts at midnight GMT+2 normally (currently GMT+1 due to DST being in effect). That means there is normally an eight (or seven) hour difference between the closing of the daily (and the four hour) charts and believe me when I say that sometimes there is a HUGE difference between the charts. Not ONLY have I seen two diametrically opposed trading signals (speaking of candlesticks or chart formations) but in most cases even the inidcators (such as RSI etc.) will have totally different readings and seeing as one or two of my choice, or basket, of trading systems are based on RSI indicating overbought or oversold readings, I may have a signal on the New York based charts but not on Deltastocks charts. Given the big difference (in hours) between the timezones it may EVEN result in one of the charts indicating a new 20-day (or 20 period on the four hour charts) high or low while this not being indicated on the other chart (again one of my choice, or basket, of trading systems depends on this signal). The only time you’re going to see (ALMOST identical sharts ‘across the board’ are on the 1-hour and shorter timeframes). As I’ve noted on another thread somewhere aroud here: some friends of mine and I opened demo accounts at different brokers ensuring that they were in different timezones (far apart) and tested a very simple system using MetaTrader’s Strategy Tester. The same EA produced WAY different results on the daily and four hour timeframes (in one case it was profitable, in another case it almost broke even, and in the last case it was an outright loser) and the ONLY difference (of course we has to make the assumption that the price quotes were ‘as near as damnit’ the same) or variable was the timezones of the three different brokers. The differences in results on the 1 hour and shorter timeframes were ALMOST negligable. And as if THAT were not worrying enough: we ran the exact same tests about two weeks later. Same brokers, same data period under review, the only difference being that the tests were run three weeks later and ‘scary’ is the only word that comes to mind: we got DIFFERENT results tests run previously (so that tells me that the historical data was somehow being ‘massaged’ for whatever reason (I don’t remember there being any difference in the ‘modelling quality’).
Whe it comes to using pivot points: SOME say to use the closing prices at the close of the New York Banking System (17h00 New York time) and SOME say to use GMT (and it just so happens that Deltastock’s charts close one, sometimes two, depending on DST being in effect or not, hours after the New York Banking System closes) although when it comes to pivots I don’t believe it makes any difference i.e. the pivots will simply be ‘relative’ to whatever chart you’re looking at is all.
So yeh: there you have the WHOLE story. Make of it what you will. But it is indeed why keep trying to encourage traders to trade ‘on exchange’ instruments simply because something like an ETF will have a fixed opening and closing time so that means that no matter WHERE in the world you are you are INDEED looking at the same daily and four charts as everyone else and to me this is important, if for no other reason, because it allows you to ‘gauge’ market sentiment and not to mention the face that, for the most part anyway, the actual traded volume figures are accurate and ‘real’ i.e. you’re not just being shown the volume traded at JUST your broker). The other alternative is to trade spot FOREX pairs that are NOT traded 24/7 (well 24/5 but I’m sure you get the picture). The only problem with this is the fact that those types of spot FOREX pairs are usually only the ‘exotics’ and, inevitably, will have HUGE spreads so there’s no point in even looking in that direction unless you’re going to trade them on the daily (and longer) timeframes. And even IF you go this route: don’t count on the ‘opening gaps’ being high probability trades (as is the case with trading equities and commodities i.e. the gaps are known in some circles as ‘the highest probability trade of the day’ because most all of the time they WILL be closed within the first thirty minutes of trading and this seems to happen every day ‘like clockwork’ unless it’s a genuine, institutional, breakway gap, but the same cannot be said for spot FOREX EVEN on the aforementioned spot FOREX pairs or ‘exotics’).
Regards,
Dale.
Interesting. So if someone based in London (eg me) looks at candlestick formations based on GMT, they WONT be getting the complete picture because there could have been some dramatic activity post 5pm the previous days…
So wouldn’t it be wise to hold two broker accounts, one that deals on GMT and one on EST?
Good question.
My own PERSONAL preference (if it were possible for me anyway) would be to trade with a broker that closes ‘bang on’ EST if were to trade spot FOREX. One OTHER important thing (I think it’s important anyway) is to try to find a broker that DOES NOT show you ‘Sunday Bars’ (and I only know of two i.e. Deltastock and FXDD but if there are other then, everybody, feel free to add to the list). Those ‘Sunday Bars’ are meaningless and they ALSO ‘fu*k’ with any and all indicators. But of course: also not something that you have to worry about with equities and commodities and ETFs. My own personal opinion (for what it’s worth on the subject of spot FOREX trading) is to trade long term (daily charts and longer) with a trading system that allows a WIDE ‘girth’ for movement. And also: there are pairs that ‘tend to trend’ (unfortunately I don’t believe that this can be said for the majors which is why I’m currently doing a test on some those exotics that I mentioned because they ‘tend to trend’ for WAY longer in one direction or another). But of course: ‘that’s just me’ and my trading systems. Here’s an example anyway of what I’m testing: Technical Trading Systems at TechTraderCentral - USD/RON 08/05/2011 16:17 D1 VS (Late). It COULD be dangerous for the ‘ill informed’ given that the particular system does not use stops AT ALL so there’s only two ways to manage risk with the system is to use Wilder’s Average True Range for position sizing (and this would depend on how cautious you’re going to be) or you could use the SINGLE BIGGEST MONTHLY move of, say, the past five years, based your position size on this movement, but trade on the daily charts. The point is that doing it this way (looking at the SINGLE BIGGEST MONTHLY move): you WILL get stopped out (or be required to stop and reverse) at SOME point on the daily charts. Of course: you COULD use the daily ATR (but there again: it depends i.e. a shorter period ATR may be misleading as can be the case with a longer period ATR. I SUPPOSE one could take the highest ATR reached for the past five years on the daily charts to be ‘cautious’ but, of course, there’s always the question of what period is ‘ideal’ and safe).
Regards,
Dale.
Come to think of it: I’d better go and update those charts and the live trades example.
The feed information is always the same what ever time of day
or timezone. But brokers open & close their candlesticks at different
times on the 4H & Daily charts.
For pivot points correlate with a major website ie action forex, also
look at charts from other brokers than the one you use.
But if your system works for you on whatever chart do not be
influenced by another chart. ie I trade at spreadbetters & Oanda,
but all of my technical analysis is done on MT4 (New York close)
I totally agree with this and it applies also to futures trading i.e. some futures are also traded 24/7 (24/5). The ony difference is that the overnight movements (before midnight New York time) are normally not QUITE as dramatic as COULD be the case with FOREX pairs e.g. the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ futures tend to just ‘drift slowly around’ after the NYSE closes unless, of course, some or the other dramatic event (disaster???) happens overnight so I guess in that sense I’m lucky i.e. Deltastock, at worst case, closes their daily charts two hours after the close of the NYSE (and at least one hour of that is ‘lost’ due to ‘settlement’ i.e. trading is closed) so I’m in a ‘pretty ideal’ situation (for myself) really I guess.
Regards,
Dale.
Couldn’t agree more. They mess with the moving average calculations, I can’t believe brokers haven’t wised up to this and offer an option to ignore…(apart from the two brokers you mention Dale)
Good morning,
That’s just the problem: I think a lot of brokers know this and is the VERY reason why they do it!!! As a matter of fact: I did a test ‘of sorts’ and it’s not only indicators that are affected but it could even be a chart or candlestick pattern or even new highs and new lows. One of my (dare I say ‘shorter-term’) trading systems relies on new 20-day highs or lows being made and even the original Turtle Trading System uses 20-day highs and lows to generate signals. I found that with spot FOREX trading: if you were trading at a broker that shows Sunday bars the test results were as different as ‘night is to day’ unless compensating for this extra ‘day’ in the week (it’s actually four extra days that you have in a month and if, as you say, you’re using an EMA, it totally throws the EMA reading ‘out of whack’ which in it’s turn, take some time to ‘settle down’ again and, of course, even the number of four hour periods in a month increases). And even following the suggestion made by many to NEVER trade on a Monday doesn’t quite ‘cut it’ either given that most EMA based indicators will use periods of 14 and 20 days.
Deltastock and FXDD ‘combine’ the one or two hours of ‘extra’ Sunday trading into Monday’s bar which makes sense to me (I cannot think of any other way to do it given the time that the spot FOREX market, unfortunately, opens on a Sunday).
As a matter of fact: with one of Welles Wilders’ systems this little issue caused some serious problems with a particular system of his (this before I was trading with Deltastock and TRYING to make money trading spot FOREX) given that it used a three day period to indicate something called ‘the momentum factor’. I asked him about this and being the gentleman that he is he responded to my email and told me to either ignore the Sunday bars or incude them as a part of the Monday bars and that little bit of information comes from one of the finest (if not THE finest in my opinion) market technicians so go figure (of course he never had this problem because he only traded commodities).
And forgetting about all of the above: one has to wonder WHY every spot FOREX broker in a different timezone is not FORCED, by international law if necessary, to close their daily (and therefore their four hour) charts at EXACTLY the same time every day (no matter what that ‘agreed’ time may be). At least that way every spot FOREX trader worldwide WOULD INDEED be seeing the exact same (or at very least very similar) charts. Particularly in the case of MetaTrader brokers i.e. it’s the brokers CHOICE as to when to have their daily charts close so there’s really no excuse. This is just ONE of those ‘additional things’ that a spot FOREX trader has to contend with and it’s ‘pis*ed’ me off for years to be honest. In my mind (and I don’t know if this could be construed as a ‘conspiracy theory’) what they’re in effect doing is forcing spot FOREX traders to trade on the 1-hour and shorter timeframes and, of course, you’re thus ‘opening yourself wide up’ to more whipsaws than you’d have to contend with on the longer timeframes). And it’s another reason why IF I DO find a certain spot FOREX pair ‘attractive’ for a trade I will use one of my systems that gives the trade a VERY wide ‘girth’ (HUGE or NO stops but have a method of managing risk and therefore position size when using NO stops).
As a matter of fact (although I probably shouldn’t be bouncing my marketing ideas off here and may possibly even decide to delete this part of this post): given that Delta has a proprietary platform it is well within their control (I think anyway i.e. I don’t know the 'ins and outs of doing this technically speaking) to be able to offer to the client the client’s CHOICE as to when they’d like a particular daily chart to close. There are some brokers and trading platforms that allow you to change the time being displayed on the chart but it’s only the time that changes i.e. that’s not ths same thing as actually REDRAWING the actual charts and bars based on the clients choice of timezone. I mean: it just makes sense to me. If I’m trading the Australian ASX200 Futures SURELY it would make more sense to have the chart close according to Australian time not so??? Same with the Nikkei and Hang Seng Futures. That type of thing. That’s why (for me anyway) other than the Dow, S&P, Russell 2000, and NASDAQ Futures I tend to trade, as far as possible, indexe futures that have their own specific opening and closing times according to their exchange times (like the Swiss Market Index for example) and it works well (if nothing else it means that you have a ‘set time working day’ as opposed to this 24/7 ‘lark’). I think it would be REAL insteresting to see the results if I can have this change made i.e. I think the picture would change drastically and you’d see a far clearer correlation between the different charts. As of right now: I believe the closest a spot FOREX trader can come to this scenario is to trade FOREX Futures only. At least THAT way you SHOULD be seeing the same charts no matter where you are in the world and I really do believe it will make a material difference to your spot FOREX trading. As I noted before: I’ve seen diametrically opposed signals between GMT charts and EST charts (I believe I’ve even seen on one or two occasions a bullish bar shown on one chart and a bearish bar shown on the other chart which closed eight hours later i.e. that’s almost an entire ‘working day’ so ‘which one is right’ if you’re trading using candlesticks)!!!
That’s why I noted on another thread: I’m not saying that you CANNOT make money trading spot FOREX but there certainly are quite a few more (technical???) ‘variables’ that are not in the trader’s control!!! (As you can probably tell: this has been a sort of ‘pet hate bugbear’ for me for many years)!!! LOL!!!
Regards,
Dale.
Most Forex brokers, Oanda, GFT, FXCM, FXDD close the daily candle at around 12AM EST, correct? Whereas if you chart with someone like Think Or Swim (A U.S. Broker) they close the dailies out on the New York close around 5PM EST. This discrepancy can make higher time frame candles different, but on the lower time frames, not so much.
As a general rule of thumb, you’re seeing the same candlesticks, and if there is a difference, it’s likely not affecting a pros trading. For example, if he were to jump to another platform that had a 3-5 pip difference in the 15 minute candlestick, I wouldn’t imagine that would make a HUGE difference.
Hope this helps.
As others have said, it won’t make that much of a difference. So don’t worry about it too much.
Hello,
Well: I guess this argument could go on ad infinitum. All I know is that MANY times (just examples given here) I’ve had a sell signal on MY daily chart and NO signal on a New York time based daily chart (or visa versa). That type of thing. But yes and as we’ve already discussed: on the one-hour and shorter timeframes there should be very little difference between the charts but the same I HONESTLY don’t believe can be said for the four-hour and daily charts (and those, unfortunately, are what I trade almost 99% of the time) (and of course I’m talking about spot FOREX trading which I don’t as a rule trade anyway). But it CAN be confusing to a new trader lets be honest (and of course don’t forget about the ‘Sunday Bar’ ‘issue’ but the relevance of that, I guess, will be largely dependant on your trading system of course).
Regards,
Dale.