Changing NinjaTrader timezone

[bboyle1234]

My computer is set to run in AEST, GMT+10.

I loaded a 10-min chart of AUDUSD using IQFeed connection.

Then in NinjaTrader tools -> options, I set the ninjatrader timezone to EST, GMT-5

NinjaTrader told me that I need to restart it, and that it won't update historical data.

After restarting NinjaTrader, the chart continued to show historical data from AEST timezone. After connecting IQFeed, the same thing happened.

I had to shutdown ninjatrader and delete all data from the NinjaTrader 8/db/ folder (except NinjaTrader.sdf) to get it to show EST data in the chart.

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

This is expected. NinjaTrader 8 will need to save your historical data in the time zone that was configured when the data was downloaded. If you change the time zone after the data is downloaded, it will need to be re-downloaded for the new time zone to take effect.

[bboyle1234]

Hi Matthew

Thanks for your reply.

The behaviour that is NOT expected is that NinjaTrader, after the restart, continued showing data from the previous timezone in the chart. When I reconnected the data feed, NinjaTrader failed to download new data and show it correctly.

I had to manually delete stored historical data to get NinjaTrader to perform the expected behaviour.

[NinjaTrader_Matthew]

Per the message after you change the timezone, historical chart data is not affected.

"Note that this change will not convert will not convert any stored historical data or trading history to the new time zone"

It would be expected that you would need to delete and reload the data as that data is stored in the time zone it was set to when it was downloaded. You must re-download the data in order for this change to take effect, a simple reload would not suffice.

[bboyle1234]

Hi Matthew,

No, it would not be expected that NinjaTrader would continue showing data from the wrong timezone.

It would not be expected that the user must manually delete data in order to stop ninjatrader showing wrong data. That is beyond most user's ability.

Therefore this behaviour is a bug.

Is there something fundamentally wrong with the way historical data is stored, such as not storing timezone as well?

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

Sorry to clarify, not disputing that historical data in wrong time zone would never be expected by the user. What matthew references is that it is expected behavior of NinjaTrader technically currently. The historical data is stored in the TimeZone of the PC and sure we could add a feature to time convert historical data but there are implications and is a significant feature to add where we feel our time better spent implementing other features. As such we require deleting prior historical data if you opt to switch time zone after working with historical data. We added a message to indicate this if you do switch time zones.

I'll start up an SFT for feature to auto convert historical data so if enough users run into problem and it becomes a high enough of a feature to resolve we would tackle it.

Thanks for reporting.

SFT #416

[bboyle1234]

Hi Brett,

Thank you. Does your reply mean you have modified the message shown to the user?

When I tested this feature, NinjaTrader did show a message saying pretty much the same thing Matthew said. However, it was definitely not explicit enough to make it clear to the user that a data delete would be required to prevent data being shown wrongly on the chart.

Did you modify this message so that users would definitely know that it is not optional to delete data?

(My personal experience was that the original message did not make me realise that I would see bad data unless I deleted it)

[NinjaTrader_Brett]

No my message does not imply I have changed messaging.

Understand the concern. Will take a look at it and see if it could be improved further.