What time does your chart's day close?

As an intraday trader in the M5 range I was never too worried about the affect of the daily close on candle formation. I set my clock so that the end of day matched the globex reopen (which corresponds to midnight in Greece most of the year).

Recently I've been trading H4 and Daily charts and the candle formations are different depending on when your chart closes. To my surprise a London midnight gave more tradable candle formations than the globex midnight. Then someone else suggested NY which is 1 hour out from London in the H4 and many out on daily.

So, if one believes that one benefits by seeing the market the same way as other do then one needs to know how the rest of the world perceives things. So this poll is for you

Any opinions on what closes are used for daily and H4 charts in the larger speculative options would also be gratefully received.



Useful things I found on the Net

How it tends to work is that because FX is a largely OTC, continuously traded market, people at banks / hedge funds etc simply place far less weight on this issue than you would think.

Personally I've always had my charts set to a London day, but then again I live in London. If I had fully customisable charts hover, and wanted to be a real pedant about it, then I'd have the day starting / ending at 10pm UK / 5pm ET (as that's the NY close and therefore as near as we get to a daily close time).

But really it's never bothered me much. And I wouldn't bet your life on traders with large pots of money to move around (i.e. banks / institutions / hedge funds etc) looking at it that way as frankly they don't just sit there and trade candle formations in that kind of way.

It's kinda the same as the fact that the fx market is not overly hung up on volume data in the same way as equities traders, say. It's not available so no-one misses it much.

My $0.02

GJ

Thanks GJ,

I appreciate the extra information. The bizarre thing is that given the emphasis place on 1-3 bar candlesticks you get such differences between the timezones and yet they are ignored.

FWIW I have come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the price rejection patterns (pin, ob, buob) is to move to a lower timeframe and look for the price behaviour they actually describe:
- strong move into a S&R / BRN zone
- rejection either very sharp or with a minor double top / 2b action
- some consolidation back near the start of the move
- then break of the consolidation

Other opinions are of course welcome.



Useful things I found on the Net

Actually if you reall do want to persist with candles I'd also advise doing one more thing (if you haven't) and that's read Nison's seminal work 'Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques' (Yeah, I know, catchy title). If you've read it, maybe re-read.

Nison was basically the guy who brought this stuff to the west, and the beauty of his writing is that he not only describes the various formations themselves (which, lets face it, can be found in all sorts of places on he web these days) but he also goes into the psychology behind the price moves as well. And imho once you have a handle on that, then the issues with different formations will simply seem less relevant, as you are merely looking HROUGH hte formations and seeing lots of other classical technical pointers (higher highs and higher lows etc).

In short, it doesn't matter what you call this stuff, merely what it represents imho. Nison captures that beautifully.

Hope that helps.

GJ

Good recommendation GJ,

I have his second book on the bookshelf behind me (from the year I bought so many trading books that Jeff Bezoz sent me a Christmas present). I'll start by going back to that. Having reread a few of the old books recently I am surprised at the little gems I missed the first time through.

I like London time because it is the largest FX market.

I am thinking of going GMT+1 so I can get to bed earlyer. I like the idea of the London GMT+2 as GJ suggests, that way I get the close of London and NY and to bed 2 hours earlyer.