Hello, little confused over starting of Time Frame based on market opening hour.
I wan to demo trade using daily and H4 TF, My local time is 4.30 +GMT, and the server time of my Demo account is 2+GMT, Now when I want to start trading,obviously I like to start at the beginning of candle, either daily or H4,
Lets say I want to trade London hours,
so when is the daily candle start time?
I guess it starts at 00.00 London time,which is 3.30 AM my local time,
if it is so, when I start at London opening (11.30 AM My time) the candle of Daily chart has already started, even if I wake up at 3.30 AM, not much useful because London market is not open at 00.00, not much activity in terms of market volume,
so I need to understand this.
How you people who trade on Daily and H4 chart manage this? what is the best way.
Does server time has anything to do with this?
Should I do some adjusting when my server time and local time differ?
Do I need to be concern about server time?
appreciate your help.
You’re in the GMT+4:30 time zone. That’s either Iran or Afghanistan. I’m guessing Iran.
You mentioned trading the London Session, which would normally be done during the period 8am-5pm London time.
And you mentioned trading the daily and 4-hour time-frames, which open and close according to your platform’s server time. Be aware that these times do not line up with London trading session times. Let’s walk through it.
We are assuming that your platform opens/closes daily candles at midnight in the GMT+2 time zone. You should confirm this. If that is the case, then daily candles on your platform open and close at 11pm London time, 10pm GMT, and 2:30am your time.
The London Session, on the other hand, is 8am-5pm London time (GMT+1), 7am-4pm GMT, 9am-6pm platform server time (GMT+2), and 11:30am-8:30pm your time (GMT+4:30).
So, each London trading session is nested neatly within one daily candle on your platform.
But, the open and close of the London Session do not coincide with the open and close of that daily candle.
Using your platform’s Wednesday daily candle as an example, we can list the following times in your GMT+4:30 time zone:
2:30am Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s Wednesday daily candle opens
11:30am Wednesday (your local time) - the London Wednesday trading session opens
8:30pm Wednesday (your local time) - the London Wednesday session closes
2:30am Thursday (your local time) - your platform’s Wednesday daily candle closes
Using your platform’s 4-hour candle as an example, the times are as follows:
2:30am Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s 12am 4-hour candle opens
6:30am Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s 4am 4-hour candle opens
10:30am Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s 8am 4-hour candle opens
11:30am Wednesday (your local time) - the London Wednesday trading session opens
2:30pm Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s 12pm 4-hour candle opens
6:30pm Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s 4pm 4-hour candle opens
8:30pm Wednesday (your local time) - the London Wednesday session closes
10:30pm Wednesday (your local time) - your platform’s 8pm 4-hour candle opens
2:30am Thursday (your local time) - your platform’s 12am (Thursday) 4-hour candle opens
Thanks a lot for your grate explanation, I got it now, Yes, I try to demo trade from Iran,
now where I can find these time for opening and closing candle time for other markets, my time from morning up to some minutes after midnight I can cover 2 markets London, US, also some Sydney.
if you don’t mind explaining, how people use daily chart though? obviously at the opening hour of London market some 8 hours has passed since the candle has been built, with not much activity, how traders deal with this?
Thank you again for your reply
Here is some basic information on trading sessions.
All of the major forex markets (London, New York, Tokyo, etc.) are “open” 24 hours per day from early Monday morning in New Zealand, until late Friday afternoon in New York. These markets never really open or close, except at the weekend.
But, most of the trading activity in each market takes place during daylight hours – in other words, during the normal business hours in each location. And those normal business hours are from 8am (± 1 hour) until 5pm (± 1 hour). If you’re thinking that’s not very precise, you’re right. But, that’s about as close as we can come to pinning down the trading hours.
In order to create a table or chart of the trading hours for the various major markets, we have to do two things: (1) we have to decide which markets are “major”, and (2) we have to arbitrarily choose times for the “opening” and “closing” of the forex trading sessions in those markets.
(1) Which markets are “major” markets?
Some traders, brokers, teachers, and writers say that there are three major trading sessions: Tokyo, London, and New York. I agree with this.
Some others, however, include Sydney as a major market. Others, include all of the countries of central Europe (which are all 1 hour ahead of London) as a separate market. And still others throw Wellington (New Zealand), and mainland Asia (Singapore, Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan) into the mix.
So, if you search the internet for “forex trading hours”, don’t be surprised if you find a dozen different answers to your question.
(2) What are “normal” business hours?
Some people cite an 8-hour business day, from 9am to 5pm (local time) in each forex market. Others say 9 hours, from 8am to 5pm. Some say that Japan and the mainland Asian markets are different, extending their business day into the evening hours (6pm, or even later). And some say that the early hours in Wellington and Sydney don’t really count, because those markets are waiting for Tokyo to open, before committing to serious trading. So, here again, there is no universal agreement among traders, brokers, etc., on when the major markets “open” and “close”.
It all comes down to this: Pick the answers that work best for you.
Here is a very typical, very generic way of dividing the trading day into trading sessions:
(You can click on the chart to enlarge it.)
If you study this chart, you might notice that all of the Pacific/Asia region could be considered as one, long trading session, and that the European markets plus London could be considered as one market.
If the Trading Sessions chart were reworked in that way, we would have three large trading sessions, which we might choose to label Tokyo Session, London Session, and New York Session. And many in this business view the trading day in exactly that way.
Furthermore, the daily pattern of trading volume supports such a view.
Here is how I prefer to view the trading sessions that make up the forex trading day:
(You can click on this chart to enlarge it.)
Note that both of the charts posted above are for the northern hemisphere summertime period (roughly March to September), when all of Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. are on daylight saving time, and all of the Pacific/Asia region is on standard time. In September and October, everything will change, and these charts will have to be replaced with somewhat different versions.
That’s a different discussion altogether, and I will take it up in a future post.
