Server Time vs GMT: An EA's Trading Hours
TL;DR An EA's hour inputs are in broker server time, not your local time and usually not GMT. Most gold brokers run GMT+2 or GMT+3, and the offset shifts with daylight saving. Set the window to 8-17 server thinking you got London and you may have set 6-15 London, missing the New York overlap entirely. Find the offset once, write it down, re-check it in March and October.
Three different clocks
Every EA with a time filter is juggling three:
- Your local time — what you see on the wall. Irrelevant to the EA.
- Server time — the clock in the MetaTrader Market Watch window. This is what the EA reads.
- Market time — when London and New York are actually open, usually discussed in GMT.
The settings box takes the first, the EA uses the second, and your strategy was designed around the third. Nothing in the platform reconciles them for you.
Finding your broker offset
Open MetaTrader and look at the time in Market Watch. Compare it to current GMT. The difference is your offset.
Most brokers serving gold run GMT+2 or GMT+3 — it places the daily candle close at 5pm New York, which is where the trading day rolls. A handful use GMT or local exchange time.
Write the number down somewhere you will find it again. It is a per-broker fact that silently governs every time-based setting you will ever configure.
The daylight saving trap
Brokers on GMT+2/+3 usually follow US daylight saving, so the offset changes twice a year. London and New York shift on different dates, which opens a window of two to three weeks each spring and autumn where the overlap sits an hour away from where it normally is.
An EA with hard-coded hours does not notice. It keeps trading 8-17 server time while the session it was aimed at has moved. For most strategies the effect is small; for anything built specifically around the London-New York overlap it is not.
The practical habit: re-check the offset in March and again in October, and adjust the window if the strategy depends on a specific session.
Working out the window you actually want
Take the market hours you want, convert to GMT, then add the broker offset.
Say the aim is the London-New York overlap, roughly 13:00-16:00 GMT. On a GMT+3 broker that is 16:00-19:00 server time. Typing 13-16 into the EA would have it trading the quiet late-London hours instead.
The session clock shows which sessions are open right now, which makes the conversion easy to sanity-check: compare what it says against what your EA believes.
Checking it is right
Two confirmations, both cheap:
- Journal check. Let the EA run a day on demo, then read the Journal tab timestamps for its first and last trade. They are in server time and tell you exactly when the filter opened and closed.
- Tester check. Run the strategy tester over a week with the filter on, then with it off. If the trade count does not change, the filter is not doing anything — usually because the window spans the whole day or the hours are reversed.
A reversed window (start 17, end 8) is handled differently by different EAs: some trade the overnight span, some trade nothing at all.
When a time filter earns its place
Gold is liquid around the clock but not evenly. Spreads widen into the rollover and the Asian session, and the session guide covers where the movement actually concentrates.
A filter that keeps an EA out of the thin hours cuts cost rather than opportunity. One that blocks the overlap because the offset was wrong does the opposite — which is the whole reason this is worth ten minutes of checking.
Questions we get
What time zone do MetaTrader EAs use?
Broker server time - the clock shown in the Market Watch window. It is not your local time and usually not GMT. Every hour-based EA input is interpreted in that zone.
How do I find my broker GMT offset?
Compare the Market Watch clock in MetaTrader with current GMT. The difference is the offset. Most gold brokers run GMT+2 or GMT+3 so that the daily candle closes at 5pm New York.
Does daylight saving change the EA trading window?
Yes, on most brokers. If the server follows US daylight saving, the offset moves twice a year, and London and New York switch on different dates. Hard-coded hours keep running as if nothing happened.
What hours should a gold EA trade?
If the strategy depends on movement, the London-New York overlap of roughly 13:00-16:00 GMT is where gold is most active. Convert that to server time before entering it, and check the result rather than assuming.
Why did my EA trade outside its allowed hours?
Usually the window was entered in local or GMT time while the EA read it as server time. A reversed window, where the start hour is later than the end hour, is the other common cause and is handled inconsistently between EAs.
Not sure your trading window is doing what you think?
Send us your broker and the hours you set, and we will tell you which session that actually covers.
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