I use both SC and ATP. Recently, I discovered that SC uses beginning-of-minute to determine time for their chart bars while ATP and other charting services (that I know of) use end-of-minute to determine time for their chart bars, which to my understanding is the industry standard because it advances the minute after 60 seconds has elapsed which is what we've all been taught since grade school. In essence, the way SC determines time for their chart bars renders all their historical chart bar times one-minute behind the real clock and one minute behind ATP and other charting services. Thus, SC chart bar times show one-minute delayed times/data while SC purports to provide real-time data which has me and my friends scratching our heads. Therefore, I posted a message on SC support forums asking if there is anyway that I can change the chart bar time to use end-of-minute instead of beginning-of-minute so that I can correlate my SC charts to my ATP charts and no answer. After speaking to another SC client I know, we have since determined that there is no way to do change the SC chart bar times to reflect the real time (as compared to ATP and the real clock) the chart bars actually occurred. And, of course, once the SC engineer got involved (who won't give me direct answers other than to say, "it's a misunderstanding"), no one else will reply to my post because I assume they either don't know the answer or are fearful to piss anyone off over at at SC. So, I posed my concern that SC may be providing delayed data in lieu of real-time data to a professional trader at one of the big investment banks. And, here is his answer... Using beginning-of-minute is how delayed data is calculated and using end-of-minute is how real-time data is calculated. I don't use SC so, I don't know if they are providing real-time data or not. But the fact they are using beginning-of-minute begs the question...why in the hell is SC calculating their data as delayed data in contrast to what they purport to offer? At the very least, it should give you pause as to what you're actually receiving because a successful trader has to have confidence in their data feed and charts. My brother, who trades E-mini Futures, is on the other side of the fence. He says SC provides real-time data and that's that, no need to investigate. I'm not so sure! Anyone here have any thoughts on this subject? Should I just blindly accept that SC service is real-time, in contrast to their historical delayed chart bar times, and continue having to add one-minute to each SC historical chart bar I'm analyzing in order for me to correlate SC charts with ATP charts or the real time the SC chart bars actually occurred? Thank you in advance for any advice you may have on this subject.
The way I always understood it (been about 25 years now) the candles' timestamp should be at the start of the candle. That's the way it is in Medved Trader, ThinkOrSwim, TWS, and TradingView, among others. I also worked with dozens of APIs that provide 1-min candle data and they all timestamp start of candle. Whoever plots candles with end-of-candle timestamp is an outlier. AFAIK the "industry standard", if it exists, is the start-of-candle timestamp. If you think about it, that really is the logical way to do it. Otherwise, if you have a non-time-based chart (like tick candles, volume candles, renko etc) your timestamp on the last candle would constantly be moving. And if you did it one way for time-based candles and the other way for all others, it wouldn't be consistent. Apart from that, how you plot the candles has nothing to do with real-timeness of the data. Candles are just the representation of the data.
You're brother is right, there is no delay to the data feed. I trade with SC and get fills within milliseconds of pressing the button. It is not delayed. The time stamp is at the beginning of the candle. It throws me off when I use Ninjatrader and their time stamp is at the end of the candle. But both are providing real time data.
Pretty sure most data I’ve used is marked beginning of bar. With stocks. I know I always cursed because I never found a good way to take minute data and make daily OHLC bars out of. Always needed to get daily data too since the close is at 4:00 and last candle ends at 3:59:59 which is usually close to official close but if you pull next bar you have a bar that finishes in after market.
The problem with that is that the daily close is not necessarily at 15:59:59.99. It could be at 16:01 or 16:05. The exchange decides what the daily close is and it may not be what you think.