Trading hours¶
Trading hours limit when a strategy may open positions. Exits (stops, take-profit, trailing, exit conditions) keep working around the clock. Without trading hours a strategy can enter at any time, as before.
You set them in the strategy builder (Strategies page, Create or Edit a strategy), in the Entry section: turn on Trading hours.
How a candle counts¶
A candle of the strategy's main timeframe counts only if it starts and ends inside the hours. With 1-hour candles and hours from 13:30 to 20:00 UTC, the first entry candle is 14:00-15:00 and the last is 19:00-20:00.
- On candle close: the candle that just closed must be inside. The fill at the next candle's open is allowed even if that next candle is outside.
- On candle touch: the forming candle must be inside.
- Conditions on other timeframes are read as usual; only the main timeframe's candle is checked against the hours.
Settings¶
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Hours | Custom (UTC) | Custom (UTC): your own windows in UTC, the same all year. Tokyo (09:00-15:00 Tokyo time), London (08:00-16:30 London time), New York (09:30-16:00 New York time): that stock market's hours on its own clock, so the UTC hours move by one hour when daylight saving starts or ends there. Under a session the builder shows today's UTC hours, for example "Today: 13:30-20:00 UTC". |
| From / To | empty (gray 13:30 / 20:00) | Custom hours only. UTC times as HH:MM. If To is earlier than From, the hours run past midnight (22:00 to 02:00). + Add hours adds another window, up to 4. Narrower hours mean fewer trades. |
| Weekdays | off (every day) | Custom hours only. Pick the days (UTC) the strategy may enter. Hours that run past midnight belong to the day they start. |
| Every day | off (Monday to Friday) | Sessions only. Stock markets trade Monday to Friday, so a session only enters on those days (in that city). Turn it on to use the same hours on weekends too. |
| Max entries per session | off (no limit) | Stops entering after this many entries in one session; it starts counting again at the next session. Each window, each day, counts on its own; an entry counts toward the window of the candle that decided it. 1 means at most one trade per session, even if the first one closes early. A whole number from 1 to 100. |
One position / Multiple positions, the cool-down and the daily loss limit still apply on top of the hours. An armed trailing entry is cancelled at the first candle outside the hours.
Warnings you may see¶
Shown in the strategy's Entry section. They never block saving.
- "No {tf} candle fits inside the trading hours (…), so this strategy never enters. Use a shorter main timeframe or wider hours.": for example 4h candles with hours from 13:30 to 15:00.
- "The trading hours start or end between {tf} candles: entries start at {first} and stop at {last} UTC, the first and last {tf} candles that fit fully inside.": for example 13:30 on 1h candles.
- "The main timeframe ({tf}) is long for these trading hours: only {n} {tf} candle(s) per day fit inside, so most signals fall outside."
- "Weekdays with a window across midnight: a Friday window ends on Saturday.": names every picked day whose window runs past midnight.
- "Every day only applies to a market session; these custom windows run on their own weekdays (all days when none are picked), so it is ignored."
Sessions are checked on a winter and a summer day, so a warning can name two sets of times.
These keep Save disabled until fixed: empty or malformed From / To ("Trading hours are on: set From and To of every window", "times are HH:MM in UTC"), From equal to To, Weekdays on with no day picked, and an empty or out-of-range Max entries per session.
Good to know¶
- Exchange holidays are not modelled: crypto keeps trading on them anyway.
- Backtests use the same hours as live trading. The Buy and Hold reference figure in backtest results ignores the hours: it is the market benchmark.
- Signals: entry alerts follow the hours, exit alerts do not.