Three clocks on one screen: platform time, server time, local time

[Shadow Trader]

The timestamps on a trade can come from three different clocks, and mixing them up quietly ruins session analysis, news timing, and any EA with time filters.

Overlooked details worth checking:

- The chart time axis usually shows broker server time, not the computer's clock. Many brokers shift their server time with US daylight saving, so the offset from UTC changes twice a year, and it changes on a different date than European clocks do.

- The clock in the Market Watch or status bar can be the last tick's time, not the current time. On a quiet symbol, it can sit still for several seconds and look frozen.

- Local computer time can differ from both. A VPS often runs in a data center time zone that has nothing to do with the trader's own location.

- Daily candles open at a server-defined rollover, so the "daily open" differs between brokers by hours in some cases, and the weekly open candle can look different too.

- An EA that uses server time for a session filter will drift off its intended window after the daylight saving change, with no error shown.

- Exported history and screenshots carry whichever clock the platform used, and that is rarely labelled.

A habit that helps: note the offset between server time and UTC in plain text next to the setup, and update it after each clock change.

How do you keep session times straight across brokers, and has a daylight saving shift ever caught an EA or a news filter out?