Does TimeCurrent() already account for daylight savings?

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My broker's server is in London. I am just wondering if I should account for Daylight Savings if I am looking at London time to make trades (one of my strategies depends on time).

Also, if I was to convert london time to new york time the offset would change based on the time of year to account for daylight savings, right?

Thanks!
 
TimeCurrent is broker's time. Ask your broker if they do DST or not. Where your broker's server is located it irrelevant to the time zone they use.

  1. How can MetaQuotes know all brokers' (they come and go daily) Time zone and Daylight savings time (if they use it and including historical changes for back testing)? Do you have that information for just you and your broker? Only then, with code, can you convert session times to broker's time to UTC to local time. You can use offset inputs, but then you must maintain them correctly, through all three DST changes when they occur.
              When is the time zone problem going to be fixed? - General - MQL5 programming forum (2020)

  2. Foreign Exchange (FX) market opens 5 PM New York (NY)/Eastern Time (ET) Sunday and ends 5 PM NY Friday. Some brokers start after (6 PM is common) and end before (up to 15 minutes) due to low volatility.
              Checking for Market Closed - Expert Advisors and Automated Trading - MQL5 programming forum (2016)

    Swap is computed 5 PM ET. No swap if no open orders at that time.

  3. Brokers use a variety of time zones, their local time, with or without Daylight Savings Time (DST), London (GMT/BST), UTC, London+2, UTC+2, NY+7.

    Only with NY+7 does the broker's 00:00 equals 5 PM ET and the start of a daily bar (and H4) is the start of a new FX day.

    GMT/BST brokers, means there is a 1 or 2 hour D1/H4 bar on Sunday (depending on NY DST), and a short Friday bar. (Problems with indicators based off of bars.)

    GMT+2 is close but doesn't adjust for NY DST.

    EET is closer, except when their DST doesn't match NY's. Last Sunday of March and 1:00 on the last Sunday of October vs second Sunday in March and return at 2:00 AM EDT to 1:00 AM EST on the first Sunday in November.

  4. Non-NY+7, means the chart daily bar overlaps the start, and converting broker time to NY time requires broker to UTC to NY timezone conversions.

  5. If you search the web, you will find differing answers. Those are all wrong (half the year) because they do not take DST into account (or that it changed for the US in 2007 [important when testing history.])

  6. Then there are (non-24 hour markets) with H4 candles that start on odd hours.
              Why My XAUUSD 4H candles start with 1 hour shift? - Currency Pairs - General - MQL5 programming forum (2019)
              H4 first opened candle - MT5 - General - MQL5 programming forum (2020)

    And H1 on the half hour.

  7. See also Dealing with Time (Part 1): The Basics - MQL5 Articles (21.10.01)
    and Dealing with Time (Part 2): The Functions - MQL5 Articles (21.10.08)

 
SundayTheTrader:
My broker's server is in London. I am just wondering if I should account for Daylight Savings if I am looking at London time to make trades (one of my strategies depends on time).

Also, if I was to convert london time to new york time the offset would change based on the time of year to account for daylight savings, right?

Thanks!
Look at the Codebase, there are existing libraries to do that.
 
Hi

As was said TimeCurrent return current server time, so it’s always the current time. If you want to convert it to NewYork time you can try to use TimeGMTOffset function or even TimeGMT to convert this server time to GMT and then you need to figure out what is the offset from GMT for New York time. Then every time you would have this standardized to GMT. 

Have a nice day👍📊

 
Thanks for the help!
 
Marzena Maria Szmit #: If you want to convert it to NewYork time you can try to use TimeGMTOffset function or even TimeGMT to convert this server time to GMT and then you need to figure out what is the offset from GMT for New York time.

How can MetaQuotes know all brokers' (they come and go daily) Time zone and Daylight savings time (if they use it and including historical changes for back testing)? Do you have that information for just you and your broker? Only then, with code, can you convert session times to broker's time to UTC to local time. You can use offset inputs, but then you must maintain them correctly, through all three DST changes when they occur.
          When is the time zone problem going to be fixed? - General - MQL5 programming forum (2020)

 
William Roeder #:

How can MetaQuotes know all brokers' (they come and go daily) Time zone and Daylight savings time (if they use it and including historical changes for back testing)? Do you have that information for just you and your broker? Only then, with code, can you convert session times to broker's time to UTC to local time. You can use offset inputs, but then you must maintain them correctly, through all three DST changes when they occur.
          When is the time zone problem going to be fixed? - General - MQL5 programming forum (2020)

@amrali did a great library to determine the DST automatically from chart's data. It works pretty well from my experience.

Determine Broker's Daylight (DST) schedule
Determine Broker's Daylight (DST) schedule
  • www.mql5.com
Script to determine whether your Broker follows the US, UK or AU daylight (DST) schedule.
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