iExpertAdvisor iBulletin 41: FOREX Unofficial Open and Close Times

                        information and ideas about MetaTrader ExpertAdvisors

The FOREX market is a 24 hour market and therefore does not have an official open or close time.

Although there are no official open and close times at which trading begins and ends, FOREX traders have begun to establish unofficial open and close times for each region of the world.

The unofficial open and close times within a region are usually associated with the nearest stock exchange. In addition, historical data shows increased trading within each region at, or near, its (unofficial) open time and decreased trading at, or near, its (unofficial) close time.

There are many creative Expert Advisors that utilize open and close times to make trading decisions. This table can be used to quickly find the unofficial open or close time of a particular region.

* Previous Day

Most FOREX brokers reference GMT for both historical and live data. Therefore, local open and close times should be converted to GMT within a MetaTrader  Expert Advisor.

For example, to test if the current time is equal to the New York open time, GMT 12:00 would be referenced as the New York open time.

This Expert Advisor code sample tests if the current time is within 15 minutes of the New York unofficial open time.

// New York Open Time is 12:00 GMT

// Hour is current hour in GMT

// Minute is current minute in GMT

If( (Hour == 11) and (Minute > 44) ) then

{ print ("New York is about to open."); };

If( (Hour == 12) and (Minute < 16) ) then

{ print ("New York has just opened."); };

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