NY Close vs GMT Close

I've been looking at ATC as a possible new broker. My main concern with them is that they have a daily close based on NY time, rather than GMT time. This makes the daily candles look different.

For those of you that have traded both, does one give a better picture of price action than the other? My first thought is that GMT would be more universal and therefore better. But, maybe it doesn't make a big difference?

I really wouldn't recommend the closing time of a broker's charting software to be your main criteria for choosing them.

5PM NY time is though used by the majority of trading houses and pros, and is the settlement time for the majority of banks. Plus, it avoids that hokey Sunday candle on a daily and 4H chart.

For the times you need to look at a 4H and daily chart, a demo feed should suffice IMO; FXPro is the one I refer to. In your question you had asked about price action trading based on a broker's closing time? If so, I don't see how real time PA has anything to do with a GMT or 5pm closing.

I'd test driven ATC's MT4 and the demo didn't live up to their preachings; I found it to be slower than many other MT4s, and I believe it had restrictions in setting SL & TP distances, and other inabilities to take and set trades close to or in the spread - it doesn't have to be that way with MT4. Even LCG I was shocked allows TPs & SLs beginning at 10 pips away from the current price - that's criminal IMO.

ATCs activetrader is whitelabeled to FXCM, and I believe I read the spreads are tighter on ATC as a result. I'd tested FXCMs implementation, and frankly I think using flash for this type of mission critical platform is gambling, in addition to it being completely non standard for the windows environment. Don't exactly remember, but it may also blow up to a huge memory footprint in the windows environment.

Thanks Beljevina. What I was referring to with PA is that the candle formations give indications of price action. Since the candles look different with the differing close time, I know it would give different signals some of the time. From what I can see, they are generally close enough. That said, if indeed the majority of trading houses and pros use EST close, then the candles would actually be more accurate than what I'm looking at now - so thanks for that info!

ATC is slower in execution than my current broker, but generally fine for how I trade. Their SL and TP restrictions seemed to be 3 pips on TP and 1 on SL, so more than good enough for me. I've read so many reviews on many websites and ATC always gets high marks. Definitely thinking about making the switch.

I am not sure about the different closing time or broker time settings that are used by different brokers, but I have seen on live accounts as well as demo accounts that diffrent candle formations do occure with diffrent brokers with the same closing time GMT. I think for the best possible candle formation the more liquid your broker is the better your chances are for the correct candle formation to be visual on your platform.

My sentiments exactly, and they did have memory leakage issues. I'm hoping they offer an alternative platform, otherwise I'll never take them seriously.

@Trader KGB, I actually wouldn't use the ActiveTrader software. The MT4 platform is what I've used in the past, so that's what I would use with ATC as well.

@Frik, I've been coming to the same conclusion. I took an honest step back and examined the charts and I would predominantly have made the same decision as I made with my current broker, so the candles are fine. Also, regarding liquidity, I looked into that as well, and for the same reasons you mentioned. ATC actually has more liquidity than my current broker, so that made me more comfortable.

Thanks everyone!

Hi folks,

just wanted to get your opinions on this thought. If we want to have our daily candles close at 5pm NY time, then we need to work with two different broker platforms. The reason for this is that broker platforms are not set to NY5pm time etc. but they are set to a GMT time. If we choose a broker with GMT+3, then most of the year this will match NY5pm, but the other part of the year when NY has daylight savings we need to use a different broker with GMT+2. This matter gets even more complicated when you also have daylight savings at your own home address which may start and end at different times of the year than New York.

Two brokers that have great data feeds are FxPro (GMT+3) and GoMarkets (GMT+2) (FXPro demo data feed is great with lots of historical data, GoMarkets live data feed has more historical data than demo feed for some currency pairs), neither of these brokers have the Sunday bars in their system.

Now, as I live in Melbourne, Australia, I did some maths and that what I came up with in regards to when to use which broker... (keep in mind that Daylight savings happens on a different day each year, so this calculation would have to be updated year by year)


starting 2nd October 2011 (AUS daylight savings starts)
FX Pro 8am AEST 5pm NY

starting 6th November 2011 (NY change to EST)
Go 9am AEST 5pm NY

starting 11th March 2012 (NY change to EDT)
FXPro 8am AEST 5pm NY

starting 1st April 2012 (AUS daylight savings ends)
FXPro 7am AEST 5pm NY



Ok folks, that's it but it's really complex and a bit of a pain to keep switching charts throughout the year . Especially also as after switching charts the previous data bars are off again compared to the current up to date bar.

So... what to do? Just go with FXPro and not worry about 1 hour offset for part of the year or keep switching?

Looking forward to your replies.....