ICMarket

Changes to Forex and Metals Session Times

 

Starting from Monday 17th March 2014, we will be implementing new trading times for our Forex and Metals products around the rollover period and start of the week on our MT4 platform.

Start of the week

We will now begin streaming prices at Market open on Monday morning from 00:03:00 platform time.

What is the rollover period?

Rollover, otherwise known as ‘end of day’ (EOD) and ‘value date change’ occurs daily at 00:00 platform time, 17:00 EST, 22:00 GMT and 00:00 platform time, 17:00 EDT, 22:00 BST during daylight savings in the northern hemisphere.

During the rollover period two things happen:

  • Positions are ‘rolled’ to the next value date. It is during this process that swaps are applied to positions.
  • Liquidity providers (banks mainly) restart their FIX engines and can be offline for seconds to minutes.

Due to their being less liquidity providers streaming prices it is normal to see wider spreads and even erratic price action over this period.

New trading times

At present we disable pricing and trading across our Forex and Metals products for 45 seconds. This short break takes place between 23:59:45 and 00:00:30 platform time, right at rollover.

Starting from Monday 17th March 2014, we will be disabling pricing and trading across our Forex and Metals products for four minutes over the rollover period. Please refer to the new trading times below.

 

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Additional changes to Metals trading times

Metals: XAUUSD, XAGUSD, XAUEUR, XAGEUR

Starting from Monday 17th March 2014, we will also be disabling pricing and trading across our Metals products for 45 minutes after rollover. This 45 minute break will take place from 00:15 to 01:00 platform time.

Through these changes we aim to eliminate the wide spreads and erroneous prices that are most prevalent over the rollover period, specifically the minute before and up to three minutes after, when many liquidity providers are offline.