In HyperScalper’s quote, above, the sentence I have highlighted is poorly worded.
GMT+3 is not a time. GMT+3 is a time-zone.
Apparently, Finpro means that midnight in the GMT+3 time-zone is recognized as “end of day” in the forex market.
And this is true for one-half of the year, specifically the northern hemisphere summer months.
There’s nothing bone-headed about it. Time-zones are complicated and confusing. Throw daylight saving time changeovers into the mix every 6 months, and you have a bloody mess.
5 pm New York time is recognized as “end of day” in the forex market, because it marks the lull in trading each day, when the Asian, European, UK, and North American forex markets are “closed”, and only the Pacific markets (New Zealand and Australia) are “open”. It is as close as our market comes to being “closed for the day” between Monday and Friday. Only on the weekend, from 5 pm Friday until 5 pm Sunday, is the market actually “closed”.
Finpro’s new “end of day” time – midnight GMT+3 – will match 5 pm New York time from early March until early November each year. But, between early November and early March, when Europe, the UK, and North America are all on standard time, the actual “end of day” at 5 pm New York time will be 1 am GMT+3 (not midnight GMT+3).
To say that a different way, during northern hemisphere winter, Finpro’s end-of-day time will correspond to 4 pm New York time.
A much more sensible change to the Finpro server time would be: GMT+2 with a shift to daylight saving time during northern hemisphere summer. This would mean, in effect, that Finpro server time would be GMT+2 from November until March, and GMT+3 from March until November. That way, throughout the year, Midnight on the Finpro servers would be 5 pm New York time.
We’ll have to watch what happens in a few weeks, when the world’s three largest forex markets go off of daylight saving time and return to standard time.