Time zone confusion

[david]

Hi.

I'm a bit unclear regarding 2 things regarding the time zone:

1. When selecting a time zone during export then there are a lot of time zones that look the same. E.g. for UTC+02:00 there are like 12 different options to choose from depending on which capital city it is. I asked my broker. He says that it doesn't matter which UTC+02:00 I choose. Is that true?
(and I assume that UTC=GMT)

2. In the manual it says:
"If you wish to ensure your EA's settings are left unchanged in-between your back-testing and then running it live, you will need to set the “Time-zone” in the MT4 Export to that of your broker. This will ensure all the historical data time-stamps are shifted to match your broker's time-zone. Now when back-testing, you will need to set any “GMT Offset” parameter that your EA has into the correct setting for your broker."
Regarding the last part in bold, is that necessary? I mean if Tickstory during export changes all the time stamps according to the time zone, then I would assume that the MT4 Strategy Tester use the same time stamps. And changing GMT Offset will mess things up?

Thanks
Dave

[tickstory]

Hi David,

In response to your questions

1) The various time-zones may have the same UTC offset, however they could have different settings for if/when DST will be applied. The good news is that most brokers work to a particular standard time-zone such as "UTC +2 with European/London DST" which appears at the top of the time-zone list. You might want to double-check with your broker, but this is the most likely case.

2) Some EAs are actually based on the universal time of day for when it will trade. For example, an EA might decide to trade the Asian session. In this case, you need to standardize all time-stamps to make sure they are expressed in the time it is working with. If your EA was simply trading at the start of every hour, then this wouldn't be so much of an issue. Either way, it's better to ensure you do things the right way to prevent any confusion!

Hope this helps.