Z12 offset too big?

Hi jcl. The Z12 I have running has an offset of 21. Twice this week it's attempted to open a trade at 20:21, on Monday NAS100, today US30. Both have failed with Broker Error - There is no tradeable price, presumably because the markets for these were already closed at 20:15. If this understanding is correct, can the offset be limited, to say 14, to prevent this? Or perhaps alternatively retry the trade when the market opens again instead of discarding it?

Thanks.

There is no limit to the offset. Market illiquidity can happen anytime, even before 20:15. You can then not open or close trades as no quote is currently available. Often the trade could be executed a minute later. Zorro can not detect in advance if a trade will be accepted or not.

Thanks jcl. The question wasn't about market illiquidity and Zorro's prescience. It was about the offset putting the bar after the market's closed, guaranteeing trade open failure. Zorro can certainly know regular market hours in advance, so a solution could be planned for a future version - perhaps converting offsets>14 to negative offsets so the bars are advanced rather than delayed?

Thanks.

Hmm, I do not fully understand your problem. Your trades failed because of illiquidity, not because of market hours or the bar offset.

When the market is closed, there are no trades. Your trade just met no liquidity at 20:21, which can happen anytime with any offset, negative or not. There is no closed market for NAS100 or US30, except for the weekend.

Hmmm... Like I said in the beginning, my understanding can certainly be wrong!

FXCM's web site is quite the labyrinth, and I haven't seen where the trading times of different products is shown. On other websites, however, they say US30, NAS100, & others are traded in Chicago and trading ends daily at 4:15. Therefore, I assumed that FXCM would follow suit. Or even if FXCM still trades these, volume drops to nothing because the underlying market is closed. And therefore is isn't a simple, transient, momentary illiquidity - it's either exactly or almost exactly market closed. And therefore something to be accounted for.

But if all that's wrong and it's simple, transient, momentary illiquidity, then I stand corrected. It does seem, however, that twice in 48 hours at exactly the same time of day is pretty far out on the probability curve...

Thanks.

I have just looked at the FXCM website, but admit that I haven't found the market hours either. Anyway, FXCM is an online broker and won't close trading because of the Chicago trading hours. US stocks are traded worldwide.

Thanks jcl.

Hi,

you can find the info in the cfd guide here: http://docs.fxcorporate.com/user-guide/ug-cfd-product-guide-ltd-en.pdf

It says that both US30 and NAS100 has a daily break from 20.15 to 20.30.

Wow! They sure buried it well... Thanks molloy!

So, given a defined daily break, Z12 should either avoid offsets in this range or if in the break delay trying to open trades in these assets until after the break...

What we could do is letting the user define no-trade times for particular assets in the ini file. Then anyone can set up broker breaks if needed.

Random thoughts:

That would work, but make the ini file too messy?

How analogous to Weekend are these breaks?

What would Zorro do when encountering a break? Skip the trade with a message? Delay trying the trade until after the break?

These breaks are broker (& asset) specific, so should they be part of the broker setup/config?

Or maybe for market closed or no tradeable price broker errors on entry there could instead be a timed retry loop? 15 minutes would cover the 2 known breaks...