Dates And Stuff

I received an email saying that the Daily bar for 27 April in Thinking Stuff was the same as the Daily bar for 28 April in Reuters. How could this be so?

Here's the reply:

I believe the issue is because of 2 things.

Firstly, TS shows the date in GMT time. Probably Reuters might use NY time. I'm not sure.

Secondly, Gain Capital starts their day at 17:00 NY time, which is 21:00 GMT in their summer, and 22:00 GMT in their winter. It's a very late time to be starting the day.

I guess a better way to say it, is that Gain Capital *ends* their day at 17:00 NY time, which is the end of the NY session, and so the next day starts then as well.

So when you talk about a Gain Capital *day* marked as "27 April 22:00 GMT", actually that means the time from 27 April 17:00 NY time, to 28 April 16:59 NY time.

So if you think about it like that, then the bar for 28 April actually starts at 27 April 22:00 GMT. On the x-axis of the chart, you can be forgiven for thinking you're looking at the Daily bar for 27 April, but actually you're looking at the Daily bar for 28 April.

It's confusing I know. It's not my fault :-) Oanda starts their day at midnight NY time, so this kind of thing shouldn't be a problem for them.