Time stamps, Historical Data , Daylight savings times,

 

Ok I am a little confused and thought I understood some of this. These are my assumptions

Assumption one: The dealing desk / stp/ whom ever has about 2880 bars or some thing close to that and it is time stamped to dealing desk time.

  Proof of concept  : I came to this conclusion though Spot checking news. The Time Shifts

 Assumption Two: If I down Load data from History center it looks like it is time stamped Moscow Time.

Proof of concept  : I came to this conclusion though spot checking Non farm payroll Data.

Assumption Three:  The Last Down load forward will be in dealing desk time. If I open the charts or call them

Assumption Four:  Metaquotes data is not adj sting to day light savings

Proof of concept  : Non Farm movements do not change time. Meaning the spikes on the chart

Assumption Five:  Only The Source of The Non Farm data shifts to daylight savings time. To make it a local time stamp.

Side note: my Source to test the shifts in time was forex factories news feeds. These change to day light savings time

My Goal is to just get a better grasp on the difference of Time stamps . Can any one reference some articles or Tell me if the assumptions are correct. I would like to get my data on one time stamp and then a line it with the changes in HV caused by bank opens, Closes and news events. 

 

Well in brief:

1) EU, USA and Australia do have different DST change days (google)

2) Every broker has its own time shift setting, some GMT (no DST), some London time (with EU-DST), some NY-time (USA-DST), some ...

3) Each source of news has as well its own time-setting. Some you can individually set to e.g. GMT (forexfactory)

4) Backtest data as well do have their own time setup, depending from where you have got it.

My final conclusion this is worse than in a kinder garden.

My 'way out' is to break down all to GMT especially mql4 now knows TimeGMT() (based on the pc - NOT on the time stamp of the quotes!).

 
gooly:


"My 'way out' is to break down all to GMT especially mql4 now knows TimeGMT() (based on the pc - NOT on the time stamp of the quotes!)."

That is what I feared.  Did you know if metaquotes down loaded data is Moscow time and if it reflects Day light savings times? 

 
Did you know if metaquotes down loaded data is Moscow time and if it reflects Day light savings times? 

Unfortunately it is not MQ. It is from the broker itself. Everything is from the broker, not MQ.

 
deysmacro:

Unfortunately it is not MQ. It is from the broker itself. Everything is from the broker, not MQ.

Then Why the warning at down load time
 
It's not from your broker. It's from a broker.
 
WHRoeder:
It's not from your broker. It's from a broker.

I see my mistake in what was said . I understand that the Data from "my dealing desk or stp " should be a aggregated quote from the banks they use and I fully except that the historical data will be aggregated quote from some one else. But who is the aggregator of the metaquotes historical Down load data. I always assumed they would collect this data from all the dealing desks they are affiliated with to make a historical chart. Now I have three questions....

what is the time stamp of that Data?

Does it adjust for daylight savings?

Who is the  aggregator if not metatrader?

 

Jeff, 

what is the time stamp of that Data? 

Observe the historical data you get in the tester (Visual mode) and compare the data you find on your live platform. You will find easily the time shift (difference between the server time and the local time) in between the 2 data feeds. This is the time shift you will have to apply to convert your time to your reference time.

Does it adjust for daylight savings?

This time shift comes in addition to the time shifts already applied in Live mode: for taking into consideration the shift between the server, the local  and your reference time. 

All these time shift change according to the periods of the year created by the different DST. To select those period, select what DST is interesting for your trading (which countries) and don't forget the that may be your broker is also applying a shift in time.   

This links might be helpful: List of stock exchange opening times

You are lucky now, as gooly mentioned, you have the TimeGMT() function that has been added!

Who is the  aggregator if not metatrader? 

Well I suppose it depends where you are downloading your history data from. For sure don't use the button download of the history center, that's a very long time now that those data are not maintained by MQ, so what you get is what your broker has set, you can ask them is those data are reliable or not (if they are providing this service or not). The best is to download 1 minute data files and load them in your platform, then use the script PeriodConverter to populate the other time frames.

But using the Tester is a long story, you have to learn how to use it and what you can expect from such work.

 

Jacques366

"Who is the  aggregator if not metatrader? 

Well I suppose it depends where you are downloading your history data from. For sure don't use the button download of the history center, that's a very long time now that those data are not maintained by MQ, so what you get is what your broker has set, you can ask them is those data are reliable or not (if they are providing this service or not). The best is to download 1 minute data files and load them in your platform, then use the script PeriodConverter to populate the other time frames.

But using the Tester is a long story, you have to learn how to use it and what you can expect from such work."

 

Thanks , I have down load the data from https://www.dukascopy.com/ using one of www.fx1.net 's products . and will visually correlate it to the news data base.  

Reason: