MT5 daylight saving: how server clock changes affect journal dates

Why the hour on your charts can shift twice a year and how to keep dates and time-of-day analysis trustworthy.

Twice a year, the clock on your broker’s server can move by an hour. If your journal sorts trades by day or by hour, that shift can quietly change which day a late-evening trade belongs to and make a time-of-day analysis look different for reasons that have nothing to do with you. This page explains how daylight saving time reaches your MetaTrader 5 records, why different regions change on different dates, and how to keep your journal dates trustworthy.

Whose clock is it?

Timestamps in the terminal’s history use the broker’s server clock, not your computer’s. Many forex brokers set the server to a fixed offset from UTC and then move it with daylight saving so that the trading day rolls over at a convenient moment, often in line with the New York close. Others use a fixed offset all year. There is no universal rule, so you must check with your broker or compare a known event against the server time. The basics are in MT5 server time explained.

Why regions change on different dates

The United States and Europe do not switch on the same weekends. The US changes on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November. Most of Europe changes on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. In 2026, Europe moved back on 25 October and the US moves back on 1 November. For a week the gap between New York and London is different from usual, and a broker that follows New York can have a server offset that matches neither region for those days. Other regions, such as most of Asia, do not use daylight saving at all, so for a trader there the local gap to the server changes while the local clock does not.

Always treat dates in a table like this as typical. Your broker’s own announcement is the only reliable source, and a quick test on a demo account, comparing the server time to a news release time, can confirm the offset.

What changes in your journal

AI Trading Journal creates one entry per closed position and dates it by the last exit on the broker’s server clock. That is stable and easy to explain: the date you see matches the date in the terminal. It also means the dates follow the server through its daylight saving change. Three things can look different around the change:

• Late-evening trades. A trade closed shortly before the server’s midnight may fall on one day one week and the next day after the shift, if your own clock stays fixed.
• Hour-of-day charts. A chart of results by close hour is on server hours. After a shift, the same real-world moment moves by an hour on the chart, so compare weeks on either side carefully.
• Weekday boundaries. The forex week opens and closes at the same real-world time, so on the server clock the opening hour can appear to move.

The Excel report from the app includes net P&L by close hour, by weekday and by symbol, so you can see these effects directly; just remember the hours there are server hours. The session side of the question, with the real-world hours of the major sessions, is covered in best time to trade: analyze your trades, and you can convert times with the forex session times converter.

A simple way to protect your analysis

• Write down the dates of your broker’s server clock changes each year in your notes.
• When you analyse by hour, split the data at those dates or look at one regime at a time.
• Label a time-of-day finding with the season, for example winter server time or summer server time.
• Do not compare a single week across the change without noting the shift.

If your broker uses a fixed offset, none of this applies to the server, but your own local gap to it may still move with your region’s clock change, which matters when you convert times by hand.

A worked example (hypothetical)

A trader in a region without daylight saving notices that, from one Monday, the best-looking hour for results moved from 15 to 14 on the journal’s hour chart. Nothing about the trader’s routine changed; the broker’s server moved back an hour on the weekend, while the trader’s local clock did not. The same real-world window, the market open of a favourite session, now falls an hour earlier on the server clock. By tagging the weeks before and after the change, the trader sees the pattern is the same window in real time. The numbers are invented for illustration.

Limits and cautions

• Server clocks differ by broker. Confirm yours rather than relying on a general rule.
• The app records server time as given; it does not convert to your local time zone and it does not adjust for daylight saving.
• Holiday schedules and early closes also change hours; see holiday and thin liquidity days.
• Nothing here is trading advice.

Frequently asked questions

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• A local trading journal for MT5
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• Trade notes, ratings and screenshots
• Trading progress and goals
• Back up your journal and move it to a new PC
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• How to set monthly trading goals
• Import your whole MT5 history
• How to tag trades
• Trade screenshots for your journal
• All trading journal comparisons