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Candle close countdown
The daily forex candle closes at 17:00 New York, and so does the swap. Here is how long that is from now, in your timezone — along with the current 1H and 4H bars, and a flag on the Wednesday close that charges three days of swap instead of one.
Reading your clock…
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Sessions running now
| Session | Status | Your time | Countdown |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sydney08:00 – 17:00 Sydney | — | — | — |
| Tokyo09:00 – 18:00 Tokyo | — | — | — |
| London08:00 – 17:00 London | — | — | — |
| New York08:00 – 17:00 New York | — | — | — |
| London – New York overlapthe busiest window of the day | — | — | — |
Candle close and rollover
Triple swap tonight. The close that ends the Wednesday session carries three days of swap, because the spot value date rolls over the weekend. A position you would happily hold through any other rollover costs — or pays — three times as much through this one.
The market is shut for the weekend, so no candle is forming. Trading resumes in —.
Anchored to 17:00 New York, which is where the daily forex candle closes and where swap is charged. Your broker's own daily bar matches this only if their server runs on a timezone whose midnight lands on that moment — the usual case, and the reason most MT5 charts show five daily candles a week rather than six.
The clock needs JavaScript and runs entirely in this tab. Your timezone is read from the browser with the standard internationalisation API — nothing is sent anywhere.
Why 17:00 New York, and not midnight
A spot forex trade settles two business days after it is struck. Holding a position past the point where that value date has to move forward means rolling it — and the market agreed a long time ago that the roll happens at 17:00 in New York, the end of the New York trading day. Everything downstream inherits that boundary: the daily candle is drawn to it, swap is charged at it, and the trading week begins and ends on it.
Midnight has nothing to do with it. Midnight is a property of a timezone, and the market does not have one. What it has is a settlement convention, and that convention lives in New York.
Daily candle close = 17:00 America/New_York
4H candle boundaries = daily close + 4h steps
Triple swap = the close that ends Wednesday
- America/New_York — an IANA timezone, not a fixed offset. It is UTC−5 in winter and UTC−4 in summer, and the browser knows which without being told.
- 4h steps — measured from the day boundary, which is why a broker on a different server timezone draws its 4H candles at different moments than yours.
- Wednesday — the value date jumps Friday to Monday, so three days of swap are charged at once. Some instruments triple on a different day; check yours.
Nothing here is hardcoded to an offset. The countdown asks the browser what UTC−? New York is at this instant, which is why it stays correct through the daylight saving changeover without anybody shipping a fix.
The daily close, in every clock that matters
| Timezone | Close, northern winter | Close, northern summer | Moves? |
|---|---|---|---|
| UTC | 22:00 | 21:00 | Yes — an hour, twice a year |
| SAST — Johannesburg | 00:00 | 23:00 | Yes — an hour, twice a year |
| London | 22:00 | 22:00 | No — the offsets move together |
| EET — typical broker server | 00:00 | 00:00 | No — the offsets move together |
| Tokyo | 07:00 | 06:00 | Yes — an hour, twice a year |
| Sydney | 09:00 | 07:00 | Yes — an hour, twice a year |
SAST does not observe daylight saving, so the close arrives an hour earlier in the southern summer than in the southern winter — 23:00 for part of the year and 00:00 for the rest. If you trade the daily close from South Africa, that hour is the difference between an evening routine and a midnight one, and it moves under you twice a year.
Where the 4H candle actually breaks
The 4H timeframe is the one that catches people out, because it has no natural anchor of its own — it inherits the broker's day boundary. On the Eastern European servers most MT4 and MT5 brokers run, the boundaries fall on these server hours:
| Server hour | UTC, winter | UTC, summer | Session it ends |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | 22:00 | 21:00 | The day boundary — the daily candle closes here |
| 04:00 | 02:00 | 01:00 | Deep in the Asian session |
| 08:00 | 06:00 | 05:00 | Tokyo winding down, London about to open |
| 12:00 | 10:00 | 09:00 | London in full flow |
| 16:00 | 14:00 | 13:00 | The London–New York overlap |
| 20:00 | 18:00 | 17:00 | New York alone, into the close |
Rollover, swap and the Wednesday that costs three times
At the daily close, every position still open is rolled to the next value date and charged or paid the interest differential between the two currencies. That is swap. It is small per night and completely invisible on a single trade, which is why it goes unnoticed until somebody totals a year of them.
Wednesday is the exception that is worth knowing by heart. A position held through Wednesday's rollover moves its value date from Friday to Monday — three days, not one — so three days of swap land at once. On a carry-negative pair held through every Wednesday of a year, that is a real number, and it is one your statement already records rather than estimates.
The analyzer separates swap from commission and from gross P&L, because the three are different problems with different fixes. A strategy losing to swap needs a different holding period; one losing to commission needs a different size or a different broker. Collapsing them into “costs” hides which one you have.
Questions
When does the daily forex candle close?
At 17:00 New York time, every trading day. That is the end of the New York session and the moment the spot value date rolls forward, which is why it — and not midnight anywhere — is the boundary the daily candle is drawn to. In UTC that is 22:00 in the northern winter and 21:00 in the northern summer, because New York observes daylight saving and UTC does not. If a site tells you the daily candle closes at 22:00 GMT with no qualification, it is right for less than half the year.
Why does my MT5 daily chart show a Sunday candle?
Because your broker's server day starts before the market week does. The forex week opens at 17:00 New York on Sunday. A broker whose server runs on Eastern European Time has its day boundary at exactly that moment, so the Sunday evening ticks belong to Monday's candle and you see five daily bars a week. A broker whose server sits on UTC, or GMT+0, starts its day at midnight — so the two or three hours of Sunday evening trading form a stunted sixth candle. Nothing is wrong with the data; the bar is real. It just means daily-timeframe patterns on that platform are computed over six bars a week rather than five, and any indicator with a lookback of N days is quietly measuring a different span than you think.
What is rollover, and why is it charged at the same moment?
A spot forex position settles two business days after the trade date. Holding a position past the value-date boundary means rolling it to the next date, which the broker does by closing and reopening it at an adjusted price — the swap. The boundary is 17:00 New York, so the swap and the daily candle close land together. Nothing about the price action makes that moment special; the accounting does.
Why is Wednesday triple swap?
Because of the two-day settlement. A position held through Wednesday's rollover moves its value date from Friday to Monday, which is three calendar days rather than one, so three days of swap are charged or paid at once. Some brokers apply the triple charge on Friday for metals or indices instead — the rule follows the instrument's settlement convention, not the calendar. If you carry positions overnight and have never checked which day your broker triples, that number is worth finding: on a strategy holding for several days it is often larger than the spread.
Do the 1H and 4H candles close at round hours?
The 1H candle does, on your broker's server clock, which is a whole number of hours from UTC for every broker in common use — so it closes on the hour for you too. The 4H candle is different: it is measured from the server's day boundary, not from midnight UTC. On the typical Eastern European server that puts the 4H boundaries at 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00 and 20:00 server time, which is 22:00, 02:00, 06:00, 10:00, 14:00 and 18:00 UTC in the northern winter and an hour earlier in the summer. A broker on a different server timezone draws its 4H candles at different moments, and two charts of the same pair will genuinely disagree.
What did the overnight hold actually cost you?
Your MT4 or MT5 statement records the swap on every trade, separately from commission and from the result. TapeSheet totals it, splits it by symbol and by holding period, and shows it next to the edge it was eating. Free, no signup, and the file never leaves your device.
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