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Which trading day and session a trade belongs to

Updated September 23, 2026

Two different clocks decide two different labels, and mixing them up is the usual reason a number looks wrong.

The trading day comes from the exit, in New York time

A trade belongs to the day it was CLOSED, resolved in America/New_York, on the futures 18:00 ET rollover. A trading day runs from 18:00 ET the previous calendar evening through 17:59:59 ET that day, so a position closed at 19:00 ET on Monday belongs to Tuesday's trading day.

That is the day used by the calendar, the daily loss meter, drawdown, discipline streaks, rule checks, day buckets in analytics and the coach. It matches how a futures prop firm counts a day, so your day in Propfy is the same day your firm is looking at.

Daylight saving is handled: the boundary is a New York wall-clock time, not a fixed offset, so it does not drift twice a year.

The session label comes from the entry

The session pill on a trade is decided by when you ENTERED, in New York time:

  • Asia, 20:00 to 24:00 ET
  • London, 02:00 to 05:00 ET
  • NY AM, 09:30 to 11:30 ET
  • NY PM, 13:30 to 16:00 ET
  • Off-Hours, anything else, including the lunch window between 11:30 and 13:30 ET

A trade entered in one session and closed in another keeps its entry's session label and lands on its exit's trading day. That is intended, not a bug.

CSV timestamps without a timezone

Some platforms export timestamps with no timezone on them. Tradovate's Performance export is the common one: those cells are written in whatever timezone your Tradovate platform displays, usually your own local time and never UTC. The import screen asks you which timezone that is, and Propfy resolves the cells in it.

A cell that already states an offset is trusted as it is, because it already names an instant.

What to do

1. Check which timezone your platform is displaying, and pick that same timezone in the selector on the import screen. The default is your browser's timezone, which is usually right. 2. If a session pill looks an hour or several hours off across a whole import, that is a timezone problem, not a per-trade one. Open a ticket and tell us which platform and which display timezone you exported with, and we will check the parser. 3. Broker sync does not have this problem. TopstepX timestamps carry their own instant.

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Risk Disclosure

Futures and forex trading contains substantial risk and is not for every investor. An investor could potentially lose all or more than the initial investment. Risk capital is money that can be lost without jeopardizing one's financial security or lifestyle. Only risk capital should be used for trading and only those with sufficient risk capital should consider trading. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

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Hypothetical performance results have many inherent limitations, some of which are described below. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those shown; in fact, there are frequently sharp differences between hypothetical performance results and the actual results subsequently achieved by any particular trading program. One of the limitations of hypothetical performance results is that they are generally prepared with the benefit of hindsight. In addition, hypothetical trading does not involve financial risk, and no hypothetical trading record can completely account for the impact of financial risk of actual trading. For example, the ability to withstand losses or to adhere to a particular trading program in spite of trading losses are material points which can also adversely affect actual trading results. There are numerous other factors related to the markets in general or to the implementation of any specific trading program which cannot be fully accounted for in the preparation of hypothetical performance results and all of which can adversely affect trading results.

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