Which time zone gives the REAL 4-hour bars?

The one that makes you the most pips.

But seriously, are you asking something along the lines of: Do the major players in forex use a specific time zone to build the bar data for their charts?

I have an opinion about such a thing, but not sure if that's what your asking.

Well lets hear it :)

My view is that the traders within a timezone look first and most at 'their' bars, so the global importance of those bars related to the turnover of that session

So in the days sequence, the Tokyo open H1 and H4 are significant, then the Central Europe, then London, then New York

With the London open maybe the single most important - but not quite as exclusively so as it used to be with India and Eastern Europe much more active than years ago

So the nearest I can get to a single answer to Phy is the GMT+0

FWIW

-BB-

It's like a trick question, but i'll still bite.

My personal preference is whichever GMT allows my first h4 bar after the weekend to be a complete 4 hours and no sunday bars.

Only thing is that the h4 bar before the weekend will be short. I can live with that.

Since the market is so decentralized, there is no REAL h4. Only if their was a centralized bank, server or agreed upon time could that be said.

A broker may adjust the GMT settings on their servers to conform to their preference. If you're lucky the H4 bar before or after the weekend will look the way you want it to.

In the end, the bar count will be the same and it's the high and low reversals that really count. If you can project those, I don't think someone can argue that your using the wrong H4.

New york session Open/Close.

My tuppence worth...

It seems to me the division into 4-hr periods is arbitrary. The start time of 4 hr bars would only important if enough volume is traded based on them for there to be more significance on the close of the 4th hour than hours 1, 2 & 3. (I can't see it in the charts, but could be just my limited ability.)

There is huge psychological significance placed on the price when a market closes (e.g. the daily close of stocks or futures) because everyone uses the same one. In a 24-hr market, where is the psychological significance for everyone? The close for the week, I think.

Beyond that, everyone uses the same hourly bars, so maybe they have more significance.

Jellybean

I don't know if you guys are aware of it but for a given system, the best combination may be GMT + X hours and candles of H3,5, or M24. It depends on an indicator you are using. According to some people, unability to use custom TF makes MT4 useless.

I utilize custom tf's all the time. In MT4, I can display a chart with the custom tf using an indicator found on this site(https://www.mql5.com/en/code/7673). In MT5, I use custom tf's within an EA as if it were any tf. You just need to build the tf data yourself.

New York

1. “Well” is not a question.

2. Chart times are broker times.

   1. How can MetaQuotes know all brokers' (they come and go daily) Time zone and Daylight savings time (if they use it and including historical changes for back testing)? Do you have that information for just you and your broker? Only then, with code, can you convert session times to broker's time to UTC to local time. You can use offset inputs, but then you must maintain them correctly, through all three DST changes when they occur.
                When is the time zone problem going to be fixed? - General - MQL5 programming forum (2020)

   2. Foreign Exchange (FX) market opens 5 PM New York (NY)/Eastern Time (ET) Sunday and ends 5 PM NY Friday. Some brokers start after (6 PM is common) and end before (up to 15 minutes) due to low volatility.
                Checking for Market Closed - Expert Advisors and Automated Trading - MQL5 programming forum (2016)

      Swap is computed 5 PM ET. No swap if no open orders at that time.

   3. Brokers use a variety of time zones. Their local time, with or without Daylight Savings Time (DST), London, UTC, London+2, UTC+2, NY+7.

      Only with NY+7 does the broker's 00:00 equals 5 PM ET and the start of a daily bar (and H4) is the start of a new FX day.

      GMT/BST brokers, means there is a 1 or 2 hour D1/H4 bar on Sunday (depending on NY DST), and a short Friday bar. (Problems with indicators based off of bars.)

      GMT+2 is close but doesn't adjust for NY DST.

      EET is closer, except when their DST doesn't match NY's. Last Sunday of March and 1:00 on the last Sunday of October vs second Sunday in March and return at 2:00 AM EDT to 1:00 AM EST on the first Sunday in November.

   4. Non-NY+7, means the chart daily bar overlaps the start, and converting broker time to NY time requires broker to UTC to NY timezone conversions.

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   5. If you search the web, you will find differing answers. Those are all wrong (half the year) because they do not take DST into account (or that it changed for the US in 2007 [important when testing history.])

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   6. Then there are (non-24 hour markets) with H4 candles that start on odd hours.
                Why My XAUUSD 4H candles start with 1 hour shift? - Currency Pairs - General - MQL5 programming forum (2019)
                H4 first opened candle - MT5 - General - MQL5 programming forum (2020)

      And H1 on the half hour.

   7. See also Dealing with Time (Part 1): The Basics - MQL5 Articles (21.10.01)
      and Dealing with Time (Part 2): The Functions - MQL5 Articles (21.10.08)