NeoTicker Blog

Daylight saving time in United States and part of Canada will change to a new schedule this year. The implication of this schedule change can affect traders worldwide, including our clients using NeoTicker. Here is a brief discussion of possible issues that can be caused by this event.

What has been changed?

The original daylight saving time schedule starts on the First Sunday of April and ends on the Last Sunday of October. This original schedule has been in place since early 1970s.

As of year 2007, the new daylight saving time schedule is changed to starts on the Second Sunday of March and ends on the First Sunday of November. For year 2007, the start date is March 11 and the end date is November 4.

When daylight saving time starts, clocks are turned forward 1 hour. When daylight saving time ends, clocks are turned backward 1 hour.

Your Computer Clock is Affected

If you are using Windows 98/Me/NT/2000, you need to turn off the automatic daylight saving time setting by hand, and then adjust the clock manually on the dates I mentioned above. If you do not do that, your computer clock will no longer tell the correct time.

If you are using Windows XP, make sure your computer is patched with the latest Windows updates. That will ensure your computer knows the correct way to adjust your computer clock automatically.

If you are using Windows Vista, it is installed with the latest correct daylight saving time schedule, so you do not need to do anything.

Time is a very important factor in trading. In fact, if you trade real-time, accurate computer clock is very important for many tasks you expected to do during the day.

Your Data Vendor is Affected

Similar to your computer, data vendor server farms are affected too. As various stock exchanges and future exchanges trade at fixed hours each day, if a data vendor failed to adjust their computer and server software to reflect the necessary changes, many unexpected problems could arise. For example, data can be sent to you with completely wrong time stamp, or request for historical data would return data with gaps, etc.

Your Brokerage is Affected

Many types of orders are time sensitive. If the computer system your brokerage has does not take care of the time change properly, your orders could be rejected or cancelled for the wrong reason.

NeoTicker is Affected

For real-time data streaming, NeoTicker should work fine as long as your computer has the correct time setting.

For some users who need to set their NeoTicker to specific US city for their trading, some patch work has to be done for the correct display of time. We will provide further instructions to deal with this matter if you do not want to upgrade your NeoTicker for the time being.

Data vendors and brokerages who do not use universal time are affected by the new daylight saving time schedule, thus we need to monitor the situation to see if special update to NeoTicker is necessary to deal with such situation.

Another aspect in NeoTicker that is affected is the charting of long term historical data. NeoTicker needs to be able to translate both new data and historical data properly relative to their respective daylight saving time schedules.

What we planned to do is to release a new version of NeoTicker that addresses all these issues.

Summary

Monitor closely your trading related equipments and services to make sure your trading is not affected during this transitional period.