Data and time shifting

Hello everybody,

Yet another thread about time shifting of historical data, but I would like to ask the question once for all before complaining because my strategies don’t have same results between backtest and real data etc.
I have downloaded USDJPY (or any other pair) data from Dukascopy within SQX, so I have data for timezone UTC.

When I check data with tool “View & Analyze”, I can see that the data start at 00:00.

I have shifted the pair to UTC+2 so when I check again, the data start as expected at 02:00.

Why I am asking is because I feel lost between all those times.
I’m UE citizen and I use both CET and CEST timezone, but my broker time seems to have +1, so UTC+2 during winter, to UTC+3 during summer. At the end, I always have -1h from my broker.
My question is: do I have to shift the data to avoid Sunday candle etc. And if yes, how many hours do I need to shift?

Thank you for your help.

Hello,

yes, you need to clone data to the Eastern EU timezone likely which is UTC +2/+3 so on 2003.08.04 you will have 3 hours difference from the UTC time

i rather using EST07 timezone, which is UTC2 with US DST, not EU DST – because the brokers are using US DST

Regarding for instance Roboforex:

As the Forex market employs a lot of countries from different time zones, Forex is considered to work according to universal time. At present instead of GMT standard, which is rendered obsolete, it’s widely accepted to use UTC – Coordinated Universal Time. RoboForex server time differs from UTC by 2 hours (UTC +2), and in summer, with a switch to daylight-saving time, the difference equals to UTC +3.

Schedule of forex trading hours.. The time zone is UTC+2 (Eastern European Time, EET)

So from March to October they use UTC+3 and UTC+2 for the rest of the year.

Does it have an impact in SQX?
If the data started in August, I would clone to UTC+3, so on Monday 2003/08/04 it will start at 03:00am, but how SQX will handle the daylight-saving time?

Hi,

SQX will set UTC + 3 on 2003/08/04 then according to zone (and DST) set the timestamp will be shifted in October. If RBFX uses US DST then it is better to choose EST07 as mentioned.

Even if you choose UTC+2/+3 (EU) the impact on a strategy should not be that significant in most cases since the difference between countries is usually few days

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country

difference is only few weeks – between EU DST vs US DST – so the difference should be minimal, but its better to use the most accurate data setting you can

Ok thank you both for your explanation. It’s crystal clear now.

Just as a note for me and maybe other users looking for a similar answer:

They are two options at the begin of the dropdown menu when selecting new timezone, I was missing them when scrolling straight to UTC+2.