Hi Everyone,
I just realized that my MT4 platform charts from 2 different brokers actually differs! : (
Using the same currency pair, same time frame I took a snapshot (see attached images) and saw some candlesticks are actually different within same chart. Shouldn’t it be the same since they are both using MT4 server?
Any experience traders here can kindly advise?
To your success,
Alvin aka Singaporean Trader
http://forums.babypips.com/newbie-island/57469-my-live-trade-results-2013-a.html
Some brokers use different timezones for their daily charts. My broker uses the NY close as the end of the day.
On the lower timeframes, you’ll see some difference as well. It’ll depend on what type of broker you’re dealing with, and the number / nature of liquidity providers they have. Since forex is OTC, there’s no central exchange where everyone sees the same price.
[QUOTE=“Kevin LaCoste;541066”]Some brokers use different timezones for their daily charts. My broker uses the NY close as the end of the day.
On the lower timeframes, you’ll see some difference as well. It’ll depend on what type of broker you’re dealing with, and the number / nature of liquidity providers they have. Since forex is OTC, there’s no central exchange where everyone sees the same price.[/QUOTE]
Hi Kevin,
It’s not the current price I’m concerned of, it’s the different candlestick occurred in these two same time frame charts.
E.g on the 15th sept the daily chart for 1st broker shows a red bar candlestick formed but in the 2nd broker’s chart it shows a green bar candlestick formed? Can that happen if both brokers actually tie up with the same MetaTrader company to provide the platform for us to trade? U get what I mean?
From my understanding they can’t tweak the bars inside the charts right? I hope they don’t. : (
To your success,
Alvin aka Singaporean Trader
http://forums.babypips.com/newbie-island/57469-my-live-trade-results-2013-a.html
Metatrader4 is the charting package which a lot of brokers use.
However the brokers’ server, which supplies each MT4 package on your computer with
the live price feed, can be in any time zone.
This can be in any timezone. Take a look at the ‘market watch’ drop down, in
each of the MT4 platforms, at the top is a time, check this against your time &
then against NY close.
Forex is decentralized. The prices you see are not coming from a central exchange like NYSE where everyone sees exactly the same thing. In forex, prices vary broker to broker.
Broker A may have a few retail traders going long, Broker B may have a hedge fund going short, Broker A and Broker B are usually passing off their orders to Big Banks C and D who take positions counter to Brokers A and B. Meanwhile Big Bank E is entering a substantial position short. All of this may be going on almost simultaneously while all of the above are arbitraging the small price differences among each other.
Because each entity is, in effect, reflecting its own prices there are price variations. Because they are all taking advantage of these price differences through arbitrage the prices remain fairly consistent among all the brokers (with only small differences, which you noticed).
That takes care of price variations on smaller time frames. The larger times (esp. 4 hour candles, where it most noticeable) are generally a reflection of the time zones adopted as others have noted.
