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New Darwinex Trading Hours (effective from 21 August 2016)

18 August 2016

As you all may know by now, Darwinex is a 100% STP / agency broker that sources liquidity from its liquidity providers (LPs) on behalf of its customers. In other words, we act as a mere intermediary between our clients and the liquidity available in the market as provided by our LPs.

This has its pros and its cons. On the plus side, our customers can rest assured that we won’t trade against them because we are NOT allowed to act as market makers and hence have no interest whatsoever in our customers losing money (on the contrary, the more our customers win, the better for us because the more commissions they’ll generate in the long run!).

On the downside, as a pure STP broker we depend entirely on the liquidity offered by our LPs (i.e. we have no control over the spreads they offer). In this sense, it is fair to say that our spreads are second to none most of the time (as recently proved by TradeProofer’s “Top Spread Awards”). However, the last couple of weeks (following the Brexit referendum) we have experienced a liquidity drought around market open on Sundays and during rollover time on weekdays (liquidity used to be low per se around rollover because interbank liquidity is literally closed).

The LPs’ reluctance to provide liquidity on Sunday open and around rollover time has given rise to wider spreads and larger candles on market open during the last few weeks. This has caused more TP and SL getting triggered on market open / close than usual.

We have been monitoring spreads on market open & rollover the last few weeks and have concluded that the liquidity available in the market during those times does not meet the high quality standards that our traders deserve. Because there is little we can do as a pure STP broker to increase the liquidity available in the market, we have decided to introduce a daily break so our customers’ trades are not affected by the low liquidity available on market open / close.

Below you can find the new trading hours that will be effective from Sunday 21 August 2016. As you can see below, the main aspects to bear in mind are:

FX pairs will open 5 mins later on Sunday night (GMT time)
FX market will close 1 minute from 21:00:00 to 21:01:00 (GMT time)
XAUUSD will close 1 min earlier than before (i.e. at 20:59:00 GMT)
All the assets will close 5 mins before market close on Fridays.

The new trading hours will remain in force until further notice. We will monitor the liquidity available at all times and we will remove the daily trading breaks only when we are sure that the liquidity available meets our clients’ needs.

New Darwinex Trading Hours (effective from 21 August 2016)*

Instrument	Open (Sunday)*	Trading Hours (Weekdays)*	Close (Friday)*
FOREX
AUDCAD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
AUDCHF	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
AUDJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
AUDNZD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
AUDUSD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
CADCHF	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
CADJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
CHFJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURAUD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURCAD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURCHF	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURGBP	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURNOK	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURNZD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
EURUSD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPAUD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPCAD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPCHF	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPNOK	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPNZD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GBPUSD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
NZDCAD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
NZDCHF	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
NZDJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
NZDUSD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDCAD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDCHF	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDHKD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDJPY	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDNOK	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDSEK	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
USDSGD	21:05:00	21:01:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
COMMODITIES
XAUUSD	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 20:59:00	20:55:00
XAGUSD	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
XTIUSD	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
XNGUSD	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
XPDUSD	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
XPTUSD	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
INDICES
STOXX50E	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
GDAXI	–	07:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
SPX500	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
WS30	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
NDX	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
J225	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
AUS200	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
FCHI40	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00
UK100	22:00:00	22:00:00 – 21:00:00	20:55:00

*Times are in GMT time.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@darwinex.com should you have questions about the new trading hours.

Last News

Last night’s incident on MT4 micro indices

14 November 2019

Our MT4 feed on some “micro” indices went down in the night from November 13th to November 14th, 2019. NB: the downtime did NOT affect FX pairs, commodities, stocks and cryptos on MT4, and MT5 operated as normal. This blog post explains what happened and what we did about it. What happened One of our Prime Brokers […]

Our MT4 feed on some “micro” indices went down in the night from November 13th to November 14th, 2019.

NB: the downtime did NOT affect FX pairs, commodities, stocks and cryptos on MT4, and MT5 operated as normal.

This blog post explains what happened and what we did about it.

What happened

One of our Prime Brokers had issues with their “micro” Liquidity Provider on STOXX50E, UK100, GER30 and WS30 in the very early European morning.

We worked with them to isolate, then fix the root cause and resumed streaming later in the European morning.

Our decision

Whilst our PB has refused to indemnify us for their downtime, our Operations Department has proactively reviewed all affected orders. We will affected customers wherever a compensation is due. Luckily enough, some of our customers benefited from this incident and made larger profits than they planned!

If you feel any of your orders ought to be reviewed, kindly reach out to info@darwinex.com. As ever, don’t forget to mention your MT4 account number and (where possible), Order ID.

We keep working hard to improve our liquidity, the better our LPs, the lower the chances that this sort of incidents take place.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for the inconvenience and do let us know if doubts remain. We’ll do our utmost to clarify!

Upcoming Holiday in Japan on November 4th

31 October 2019

There is a public holiday in Japan on Monday, 4th of November. Kindly note that during this time spreads may be wider and liquidity may be thinner. Bank holidays may also give rise to changes on the applicable swap rates.

Upcoming Holiday In New Zealand Resulting In The Possibility Of Wider Spread

25 October 2019

Please be aware that there is a public holiday in New Zealand on Monday, October 28th during which spreads may be wider and liquidity may be thinner. For any questions, reach out to info@darwinex.com.

MetaTrader and Wine / PlayOnMac incompatibility on MacOS Catalina

18 October 2019

We’d like to inform you that MetaTrader terminals are currently not working correctly when using Wine or PlayOnMac on MacOS Catalina. CodeWeavers (developers of Wine) are already working on fixing this. We recommend that if you use Wine or PlayOnMac on MacOS, you postpone updating the operating system to MacOS Catalina until a solution is […]

We recommend that if you use Wine or PlayOnMac on MacOS, you postpone updating the operating system to MacOS Catalina until a solution is ready.

In the meantime, users who are already affected can continue using MetaTrader on MacOS by installing Windows as an alternative OS or by using Parallels.

For any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@darwinex.com.

metatrader

Margin increase on 18 October 2019 (Professional Clients only)

17 October 2019

Please be informed that our margin requirements for Professional Clients are changing on Friday (18 October 2019) around 17:00 UK time due to the uncertainty around the Brexit negotiations. Retail Clients are not affected by this change. The new margin requirements described below will remain in force until further notice. In this connection, please note that the new margin requirements […]

Please be informed that our margin requirements for Professional Clients are changing on Friday (18 October 2019) around 17:00 UK time due to the uncertainty around the Brexit negotiations. Retail Clients are not affected by this change.

The new margin requirements described below will remain in force until further notice.

In this connection, please note that the new margin requirements will affect both EXISTING and NEW positions. Kindly make sure you have enough available margin / equity in your account for the days leading up to and during the voting/announcement of results.

Instrument	Current Margin	New Margin (Brexit)
FOREX
EURAUD	1.00%	2.00%
EURCAD	1.00%	2.00%
EURCHF	1.00%	2.00%
EURGBP	0.50%	2.00%
EURJPY	0.50%	2.00%
EURNOK	1.00%	2.00%
EURNZD	1.00%	2.00%
EURUSD	0.50%	2.00%
GBPAUD	1.00%	2.00%
GBPCAD	1.00%	2.00%
GBPCHF	1.00%	2.00%
GBPJPY	0.50%	2.00%
GBPNOK	1.00%	2.00%
GBPNZD	1.00%	2.00%
GBPSEK	1.00%	2.00%
GBPUSD	0.50%	2.00%
COMMODITIES
XAUUSD	0.50%	2.00%
INDICES
STOXX50E	2.00%	3.00%
UK100	2.00%	3.00%

For the ease of reference, Margin in % = (1/max. leverage)* 100. In other words:

0.50 % = 1:200 leverage

1.00 % = 1:100 leverage

2.00 % = 1:50 leverage, etc.

Need help? At info@darwinex.com we’ll be happy to assist you!

Brexit

Potential High Volatility upon Market Open on Sunday Oct 20th

15 October 2019

We’d like to inform our traders of the possible extraordinary UK parliamentary sitting on Saturday October 19th, 2019 where a vote may be held on any Brexit deal achieved at the EU Council meeting this week.

Due to the uncertainty created by this event, we urge our traders to proceed cautiously as market moves may be large. Particular attention should be paid to the market open on Sunday October 20th, where there is potential for high volatility which may cause market gaps.

To manage their account effectively, traders should review margin rates and that there is sufficient collateral to cover their exposure.

For any questions, reach out to info@darwinex.com and we’ll be happy to help.

Brexit