Question for the people living in the US. I live in the UK and I am not to familiar with the US central time conversion into UK time. I am trying to split my trading charts into night session and day session for the future contract symbol ZF (5-Year U.S. Treasury Note Futures) On the CME group website, I read: Trading Hours (All times listed are Central Time) OPEN OUTCRY MON - FRI: 7:20 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. CME GLOBEX SUN - FRI: 5:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. It does not help me much to decide when to split my charts between night and day sessions. All I know is London is 5 hours ahead of New York but I am not sure New York is the reference for the central time anyway. What I notice is that around 13.30 London time (8.30am New York time), every day, the future ZF, starts moving quite a lot, and for that reason I spilt the day and night session at 13.30 London time = 8.30am New York time on my charts. It's probably approximate, could someone tell at what UK time or New York time, the day session starts so that I can split my charts sessions more accurately? Thanks
Chicago would be your reference point for Central time. Just add one more hour to get 6 hours. The best volume session is the day session, which is from 8:30am to 3:15pm (many econ numbers come out at 7:30 CST so there are trading opps before the equity markets open). That would translate to 2:30pm to 9:15pm UK time. The second session you mentioned is the beginning of the overnight session. Volume dries up during that time but if you want to trade it just add 6 hours to it.
Thanks The1, the 6 hours difference with the UK makes sense to me because I see the big moves from 13.30 onwards London time usually, which is 7.30am in Chicago, the time of the economic news as you said. From a charts perspective, I believe it makes sense to start the day session at 7.30 Chicago time rather than at the open of 8.30, since the markets starts moving a lot from 7.30 onwards. Is it common for traders to split their charts sessions at 7.30 rather than 8.30? With regards to the close time of the day session, you quoted 9.15 UK time. I find it strange because I can trade until 10.00pm UK time. Then the markets stops at 10.00pm UK time and starts again at 11.30pm UK time
UK during summer is 5 hours ahead of NY, 6 hours ahead of Chicago. When it's daylight savings time, for a few weeks there might be a +/- 1 hour change depending on if the US changes clocks several weeks before Europe, as it has been doing for the last few years.
Thanks to all you guys for your posts, link and comments. Indeed, the link is quite useful, not only it gives the current time, but works it out in terms of GMT time and it says when we flip from summer to winter time. Indeed, Chicago and London do not flip from summer time to winter time on the same day, so it's something to watch... London, England, United Kingdom Current Time Thursday, 1 September 2011, 23:09:52 BST UTC/GMT Offset Standard time zone: No UTC/GMT offset Daylight saving time: +1 hour Current time zone offset: UTC/GMT +1 hour Time zone abbreviation: BST - British Summer Time Daylight Saving Time DST started on Sunday, 27 March 2011, 01:00 local standard time DST ends on Sunday, 30 October 2011, 02:00 local daylight time See time changes/daylight saving time in other years Chicago, Illinois, United States Current Time Thursday, 1 September 2011, 17:10:22 CDT UTC/GMT Offset Standard time zone: UTC/GMT -6 hours Daylight saving time: +1 hour Current time zone offset: UTC/GMT -5 hours Time zone abbreviation: CDT - Central Daylight Time Daylight Saving Time DST started on Sunday, 13 March 2011, 02:00 local standard time DST ends on Sunday, 6 November 2011, 02:00 local daylight time See time changes/daylight saving time in other years