Bar Building

The International Date Line is the starting point for all time bases.

The International Date Line is an imaginary line that runs from the north pole to the south pole through the Pacific Ocean. It is different from Greenwich Mean Time, another imaginary line that runs through Greenwich, England.

All bars, from 1 minute to 1439 minute, begin at the International Date Line. If you have a 15 minute bar chart on U. S. Treasury Bonds, an instrument that opens at 7:20 Central Time, the first fifteen minute bar on your chart plots 10 minutes worth of trades.

The reason for this is that to build a fifteen minute bar chart, Aspen Graphics counts forward from the International Date Line in fifteen minute increments. As it works out, fifteen minute bars change on the quarter hour, not when bonds open, so the first fifteen minute bar on a bond chart is actually short five minutes worth of trades.

The same principal applies to all time bases. The reason Aspen Graphics uses the International Date Line is that it provides a standard by which the Formula Writer and multiple instrument charts can operate.