Rollover at new session start, or new day start?

[cgeorgan]

Fellas,

I might be getting this wrong, so correct me if this is the case:

I'm trying to get a sense of why - when I specify a contract rollover date - that date doesn't take effect at the start of that contract's session start for that day...even when the physical date precedes the actual date. I'll elaborate.

Take HO (heating oil). Yesterday during the 8/17 session (defined as 6PM EST on 8/16 to 5PM EST on 8/17), I set the rollover date to 8/18. To me, this means that rollover should occur on the 8/18 session start. That is, 6PM EST on 8/17. This does not appear to be what the behavior is. It seems as if rollover is set to occur on the actual date change from 8/17 to 8/18 (00:00:01 EST). Sessions are correctly set BTW (NYMEX Metals/Energy ETH default, EST).

Is this the case?

In my professional opinion, rollover dates should correspond to session dates and times, even when those sessions don't exactly correlate with actual dates and times.

Thoughts?

[NinjaTrader_PatrickG]

Fellas,

I might be getting this wrong, so correct me if this is the case:

I'm trying to get a sense of why - when I specify a contract rollover date - that date doesn't take effect at the start of that contract's session start for that day...even when the physical date precedes the actual date. I'll elaborate.

Take HO (heating oil). Yesterday during the 8/17 session (defined as 6PM EST on 8/16 to 5PM EST on 8/17), I set the rollover date to 8/18. To me, this means that rollover should occur on the 8/18 session start. That is, 6PM EST on 8/17. This does not appear to be what the behavior is. It seems as if rollover is set to occur on the actual date change from 8/17 to 8/18 (00:00:01 EST). Sessions are correctly set BTW (NYMEX Metals/Energy ETH default, EST).

Is this the case?

In my professional opinion, rollover dates should correspond to session dates and times, even when those sessions don't exactly correlate with actual dates and times.

Thoughts?

Sessions on a chart are controlled by your chart's "session template" setting. In most other NinjaTrader windows, the session is controlled by your provider's session hours. Your actual time stamps are usually controlled by your PC's time zone and clock.

When taking the above information into consideration, you can see that there is no "hard coded" time stamp to reference in this case. It is very much user-configurable. Someone, for example, could be using an RTH or 24/7 session template on their charts.

This is why the rollover dates are based on actual dates. If you would like the rollover date to match the ETH session, you would need to adjust your PC clock accordingly.