Friday closing which midnight

Trading Discussion Currencies
1

Is the midnight close on Friday midnight GMT or is it midnight New York, London?Cheers Bantam

2

I assume that you are asking about the weekly closing of the retail spot forex market – the market which exists between retail forex traders (like us) and our brokers.

The Friday closing time varies from one retail broker to the next. In the U.S., the two largest retail brokers use different closing times. Forex.com (the largest broker) closes their platform (which, in turn closes all trading) at 7 pm New York time. Oanda (the second-largest U.S. retail broker) closes down at 5 pm New York time.

5 pm New York time is a popular time for the opening and closing of daily candles, because it coincides with the daily lull in the worldwide currency market which typically occurs between 5 pm and 6 pm. Accordingly, many brokers align their daily candles, their Monday opening, and their Friday closing to this time.

One pattern, followed by many brokers worldwide, is to open their Monday daily candles at 5 pm New York time on Sunday, closing them at 5 pm New York time on Monday; then opening their Tuesday daily candles at 5 pm New York time on Monday, and closing them at 5 pm New York time on Tuesday; and so forth throughout the week until 5 pm New York time on Friday when their Friday daily candles are closed.

This pattern provides for 5 equal-length trading days of 24 hours each, as opposed to the shortened Sunday and Friday trading days that some other brokers adhere to.

Notice two things:

(1) Brokers all over the world can conform to the 5 pm New York open/close time, by translating that time into their own time zones. So, for brokers in the U.K. who follow this pattern, the open/close time is 10 pm London time. For brokers in Europe, it would be 11 pm Frankfurt time. And so forth.

5 pm NY time = 10 pm London time = 11 pm Frankfurt time = 2200 GMT in the winter (std. time).
5 pm NY time = 10 pm London time = 11 pm Frankfurt time = 2100 GMT in the summer (DST).

(2) The open/close time of daily candles determines the open/close times of all the smaller time-frames down to 2-hour. That is, if a broker opens daily candles at 5 pm New York time, then 2-hour candles will open at 5 pm, 7 pm, 9 pm, etc., throughout the trading day; 3-hour candles will open at 5 pm, 8 pm, 11 pm, etc.; 4-hour candles will open at 5 pm, 9 pm, 1 am, etc. And so forth. One-hour candles, and all time-frames lower than 1-hour are not affected by the open/close time of daily candles. Nor are weekly and monthly candles affected.

Back to your question about a midnight closing time: which broker are you referring to?

Edit:

In the second paragraph of this post, there is an error regarding the closing time of daily candles on the FOREX.com platform. See post #3 below for the correct info.

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3

Hi @Clint,

FOREX.com closes trading for the week at 5 pm ET (New York time) on Friday like most other forex brokers, but you can usually log in even after that time, unless we are performing some maintenance on our servers. However, you won’t be able to place any trades over the weekend between 5 pm ET Friday and 5 pm ET Sunday.

Forex trading is available 24 hours a day from 5 pm ET Sunday through 5 pm ET on Friday, including most U.S. holidays. Spot gold and silver trading is available 23 hours a day from 6pm ET Sunday through 5pm ET Friday. Trading is closed from 5 pm to 6 pm ET daily. Spot gold and silver trading also follow CME holiday closures. http://on.forex.com/2EwPom7

4

Hi @Bantam,

As @Clint pointed out, the time zone on your charts can vary from one broker to the next, and even from one platform/server to the next with the same broker.

Some of the most common time zones you may see on your charts are:

  1. GMT
  2. Your local time zone (based on your computer/browser settings)
  3. New York Time (GMT-5 in the summer and GMT-4 in the winter)
  4. New York Close AKA Financial Time (GMT+2 in the summer and GMT+3 in the winter, because midnight on these time zones corresponds to 5 pm New York Time)

Compare the time you see on the latest candle of your chart to your local time. That will tell you what time zone the chart uses. We’re curious to know what you find.

5

Thanks for the correction.

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