Time Related Issues

a.m. : ante meridian, meaning before midday, or before the middle of the daylight hours. Also, before noon is used to reduce confusion. For clarity, a person should say 12 Midnight for 12:00 a.m. Ante Meridian is usually referenced in coding comments as:
// a.m. is 00:00:00 to 11:59:59 (hours: minutes: seconds)

p.m. : post meridian, meaning after midday. The time considered to be after noon. For clarity one should say 12 Noon for 12:00 p.m. Post Meridian is usually referenced in coding comments as:
// p.m. is 12:00:00 to 23:59:59.
Time Zones: One of the 24 established divisions or sectors into which the earth is divided for convenience in reckoning time: each sector represents 15 degrees of longitude, or a time interval of one hour. The zones start on the zero longitude in Greenwich, England. Each time zone keeps time slightly differently so that at 12:00 noon the sun will be high in the sky.

GMT: Greenwich Mean Time . GMT is sometimes called Greenwich Meridian Time because it is measured from the Greenwich Meridian Line (Longitude 0) at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. It is the place from where all time zones are measured, starting in 1884. It is also known as the “Universal Time”.

Universal Time: Universal Time is equivalent to GMT. By international agreement, the term UTC is recommended for all general timekeeping applications, and use of the term GMT is discouraged.
It is often referred to as either Universal Time (UT) or Universal Time, Coordinated (UTC). This time is considered to be the most accurate.
It is almost always referenced by a 24 hour clock: 0000 to 2359. Sometimes a Z is appended to the time to indicate a Zero Hour offset because we are referencing the time at the zero longitudinal meridian, as in 1030Z. Pronounced “One Zero Three Zero Zulu.”
UTC is considered to be more accurate for weather, and astronomical applications. UTC can also be obtained readily from the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites for navigation purposes.

Daylight Saving Time (DST):
About 70 Countries use some form of Daylight Saving time. Because the earth is tilted 23 degrees, we have changing seasons, and shifting sunrise and sunset times [as the earth rotates around the Sun].
The intent is to move 1 hour of daylight from the morning to the evening to make better use of planet Earth’s available daylight. In reality there is no “saving” of daylight. This term could better be depicted as “Daylight SHIFTING time”.

EST: Eastern Standard Time (New York, United States). Add (-5) hours from Greenwich Mean Time. This implies NO Daylight Saving time offset. Although if Daylight Saving time is in effect, most people still refer to the time in New York, USA as EST.

EDT: Eastern Daylight Time. If Daylight Saving time is in effect, add (- 4) hours to Greenwich Mean Time.

Check Your Trading Time
Because each broker may use a different time zone, it’s important to know which time zone they use. Since my Expert Advisor don’t know what time zone the server using, then you need to match its trading time carefully. Usually a broker will tell you what time zone he use in his server, and also a good broker will send to your mailbox a confirmation about time shift that affected by DST. If you don’t have any idea about your Local Time Zone or Your Broker Time Zone, then I suggest you to set your Systems Time Zone to GMT. Just double click the clock on tray icon or enter to your control panel system and click/double click Date and Time icon to show Date and Time properties tab. Switch to Time Zone tab, and the select GMT Greenwich Mean Time on pull down menu.


To remove ambiguity about DST unchecked the checkbox “Automatically adjust for daylight saving changes”.


Now switch to Internet Time tab, make sure your system has internet connection, select time.nist.gov as Server, then click Update now to get current GMT time.

Terms:

Now you can compare your current time after updating with your broker time.