The Marketplace Escort allows you to set various properties for the different trading exchanges: trading hours (Ext.Start / Start / End / Ext.Start according to the local time set on users' computers as well as a column with the time zone of the selected exchange), trading pauses, reversal times etc.
Trading hours
Trading hours are the official time periods during which trading takes place on exchanges. Trading hours always correspond to local time on users' computers.
AgenaTrader automatically assigns an exchange to an instrument being traded on the chart. Therefore each chart will display prices in correspondence with the official trading hours on the exchange.
This relieves you from the necessity of checking the exchange opening hours (start/end) for specific instruments in the list chart group and allows you to focus on trading decisions.
Exclude Weekend checkbox allows you to define the time frames for weekends to be excluded from the chart. If deactivate this checkbox, columns StartDay, Start Time, End Date, End Time become disabled.
The Marketplace Escort ensures that the trading hours are displayed correctly on your chart.
Additionally you can set over-the-counter trading hours within the Marketplace Escort, such as pre- and post-market hours (for example 0.5 = 1/2h). These time ranges will be included when loading a history for an instrument.
In order to activate or deactivate over-the-counter price movements on the chart press the
button on the chart toolbar.
IMPORTANT NOTE:__
There CAN be differences between the close-prices of a trading session depending which intraday-timeframe you are looking at.
If trading end is 22:05 and you are looking at a 15min chart (which is directly received from datafeed), the last candle which will be shown is the candle closing on 22:00. (as the next candle would close on 22:15 and therefore will not be shown).
However, if you switch down to the 1min chart, you will get data loaded into the chart until 22:05.
Therefore 15min candle shows the close price from 22:00 and 1min chart from 22:05 - this is where the differences are coming from.
For directly received timeframes we cannot split them to fit exactly to the trading session end.
IMPORTANT NOTE: not all brokers/data feed providers will provide you with the pre- or post-market historical price movements data.
If a data feed provider does not have these historical pre- and post-trade data, then only the pre-/post-trade data that AgenaTrader is able to record during the running period will be displayed (AgenaTrader must be opened during the pre- and post-trade period).
Trading pauses
During trading pauses the market is often uncertain and therefore traders do not wish to open new trades.
The trading pauses can be during:
- Trade opening: highly unpredictable market because the overnight orders are included.
- Midday break: due to dominated low volumes, markets are more vulnerable to shake-outs and other tricks.
- Trading end: it is not advisable to enter positions shortly before the daily trading halts.
During trading pauses AgenaTrader++ does not generate new signals; however, it is still possible to open new positions. If you wish to avoid running your trades during these uncertain times check the Flat checkbox in the Marketplace Escort. This will automatically close all trades and orders during the determined time. You will receive information in the Protocol tab when this happens.
Important note: if you wish to close your positions automatically shortly before the trading pauses begin, and also wish to not receive any newly generated signals for a certain amount of time before this, then you must define two trading pauses which flow into each other seamlessly.
With the Chart Color... settings you can choose which color is used as the background color for trading breaks. Note that the same color will be shown in the Analyzer-Escort Column during the trading pauses.
In order to display the trading pauses it is necessary to open the available indicators by clicking the button
on the chart toolbar, then add the Trading Times Background indicator to the chart and press the ОК or Apply button.
Reversal times
Reversal times are specific time ranges during the day in which it is statistically likely that an instrument will change its trend (direction).
This happens primarily due to a shift (increase or decline) in the volume during these specific time frames, which can be caused by:
- Beginning of lunch breaks
- Beginning of the afternoon sessions of large institutions
- EOD-positioning and other factors.
If these hours are known you can enter them into the Marketplace Escort within the Reversal Times tab.
Click the Chart Color button to set the color that will be displayed on the chart during a reversal time range. This will help you to recognize the information and if necessary react as soon as you see it. Note that the same color will be shown in the Analyzer-Escort Column during reversal times.
In order to display the reversal times it is necessary to open the available indicators by clicking the button
on the chart toolbar, then add the Trading Times Background indicator to the chart and press the ОК or Apply button.
ATTENTION! The markets do not obey regularities. Signals created within these time ranges may be relevant but there is no guarantee for success.
Automatic import
If you connect to a new data feed / broker in the account connection manager, the Instrument import popup will be displayed. Depending on which markets are selected in the instrument import popup, the relevant trading hours and exchanges will be loaded via a server. After selecting and importing all exchanges, the Marketplace Escort will display a dialog window in which you can set the exchange trading hours.
Please verify these trading hours and keep in mind that the US stock exchanges have different summer/winter phases which may result in display deviations.
ATTENTION! When using the internal simulation account, the correct input of trading hours is absolutely essential due to enormous deviations in spread that may exist in the pre-/post-market trading hours. This may lead to your orders being filled even if the price is far away from your order.