RTH Session Windows: How to Restrict Automated Trading

Key Takeaways
• PickMyTrade’s Active Hours setting restricts trading to a start and end time entered in Eastern Time (ET), with options to leave positions open, close one account, or close all accounts when the window ends.
• PickMyTrade’s documentation does not explicitly state whether its ET field auto-adjusts for Daylight Saving Time — verify this yourself around the March and November clock changes.
• CME futures rollover happens quarterly (H, M, U, Z contract months) on the Monday before the third Friday of the expiration month, and it is not handled by session-window settings at all.
• A session window filters when orders fire; it does nothing to confirm you’re trading the correct front-month contract.
• Two calendar reminders a year (DST) plus four a year (rollover) close the actual gap, since no platform setting replaces that manual check.

Table of Contents

1. How Do You Restrict Trading to RTH Session Windows in PickMyTrade?
2. What Happens to Your Positions When the Window Closes?
3. Does the ET Time Field Actually Adjust for Daylight Saving Time?
4. Why Do Futures Rollover Days Break a Fixed Session Window?
5. What Breaks a Naive Session Window? A Quick Reference
6. How Do You Build a Session Window That Actually Holds?
7. Frequently Asked Questions
8. Does PickMyTrade’s Active Hours setting stop orders outside my session window?
9. Will my RTH window automatically adjust when Daylight Saving Time changes?
10. Does PickMyTrade automatically roll my strategy to the new futures contract?
11. Can I set different session windows for different accounts?
12. What’s the safest window setting if I want to hold trades overnight?

How Do You Restrict Trading to RTH Session Windows in PickMyTrade?

PickMyTrade’s Active Hours feature lets you set a Start Time and End Time, entered in 24-hour format and labeled in Eastern Time, and apply it to a specific account or to all connected accounts. You can now configure multiple session windows per account rather than a single block, so you could, for example, allow trading during the regular 9:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. ET stock session while blocking the overnight Globex session entirely. Outside the configured window, PickMyTrade simply won’t pass new orders through, no matter what your TradingView alert sends.

This is a genuinely useful guardrail. A strategy built and backtested on RTH price action often behaves differently in thin overnight liquidity, and blocking those hours at the platform level removes the temptation to let a bot trade conditions it was never tuned for.

Citation capsule: PickMyTrade’s trading-time settings let traders configure Start Time and End Time in Eastern Time, apply the window to one account or all accounts, and choose what happens to open positions when the window closes. Source: PickMyTrade Trading Time Settings docs.

What Happens to Your Positions When the Window Closes?

This part is well documented and worth understanding before you flip the setting on, because the three options behave very differently. “No Close” leaves existing positions open when the window ends; it only blocks new orders from entering. “Select An Account” automatically closes all open positions in the account you specify. “Close All” closes every open position across every connected account tied to that window, and it also cancels any working limit or stop orders if you’ve enabled that option.

Pick the wrong mode and you’ll either carry overnight risk you meant to avoid, or get flattened out of a position you wanted to hold through the close. If your strategy is designed to hold overnight, “No Close” combined with an entry-only restriction is usually the right combination: you stop new signals from firing outside RTH without force-closing a trade that’s still working.

Does the ET Time Field Actually Adjust for Daylight Saving Time?

This is the question that matters most and the one PickMyTrade’s own documentation doesn’t answer directly. The Active Hours settings page labels its inputs “Start Time (Eastern Time)” and “End Time (Eastern Time),” and every worked example in the docs uses ET. Nowhere does the documentation state whether that field tracks US Eastern clock time dynamically (so it stays pinned to 9:30 a.m. through the March and November changeovers) or whether it’s stored as a fixed offset that could drift by an hour when the US moves between EST and EDT.

[UNIQUE INSIGHT] That distinction matters because “Eastern Time” is ambiguous by itself. Most trading software that labels a field “ET” ties it to the America/New_York civil clock, which does observe DST automatically, meaning 9:30 a.m. ET stays 9:30 a.m. ET all year. But that behavior isn’t guaranteed by a label; it’s an implementation detail PickMyTrade hasn’t published. Given the ambiguity, the safest assumption is not to assume. In the week around each DST transition (the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November), pull up your Active Hours setting and confirm your window still lines up with the market open and close you intend, rather than trusting it silently carried over.

Citation capsule: CME Globex session times are quoted in US Eastern time and shift with Daylight Saving Time, so the underlying market’s open and close move relative to UTC twice a year even though the ET label stays the same. Source: PropFirmVerifier: Futures Trading Hours.

Why Do Futures Rollover Days Break a Fixed Session Window?

A session window controls when orders can fire. It has no concept of which contract those orders should be trading, and that’s where rollover creates a separate, unrelated failure mode. CME equity index futures (ES, NQ, YM, RTY and their Micro equivalents) expire quarterly, on the third Friday of March, June, September and December (the H, M, U and Z contract months). Market convention is to roll open interest to the next contract on the Monday before that third Friday, as liquidity migrates from the expiring front-month contract to the new one.

If your TradingView alert still references the outdated contract symbol after that migration, your RTH window will dutifully let orders through at exactly the right time of day, into a contract that’s now thin, wide-spread, and increasingly abandoned by other participants. Your session-window setting did its job perfectly; the contract underneath it just moved on without it. This is a strategy-configuration problem, not a PickMyTrade platform limitation, but it’s the kind of gap that’s easy to miss precisely because the time-of-day control gives a false sense that the schedule is fully handled.

Citation capsule: CME equity index futures roll to the next quarterly contract on the Monday before the third Friday of the expiration month, and liquidity typically shifts to the new front-month contract by midweek of rollover week as open interest crosses over. Source: Futures Hive: 2026 Rollover Dates Explained.

What Breaks a Naive Session Window? A Quick Reference

How Do You Build a Session Window That Actually Holds?

[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] Treat the RTH window like any other piece of trading infrastructure that needs periodic maintenance, not a switch you set once. A few habits close most of the gap:

• Put the DST changeover dates on a calendar twice a year and re-check your Active Hours setting against the actual market open right after each one.
• On rollover week, update the contract symbol in your TradingView alert before the Monday roll, not after you notice fills going into a dead contract.
• Use “No Close” if your strategy is meant to hold overnight, and reserve “Close All” for strategies that are genuinely intraday-only. Mixing these up creates the exact kind of unintended exposure the window was supposed to prevent.
• If you trade multiple contracts across different exchanges (equities, metals, energy), remember each one can have its own rollover calendar even though they all share the same DST-affected ET clock.

None of this requires new tooling. It requires treating “the window is set” as a starting point, not a guarantee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does PickMyTrade’s Active Hours setting stop orders outside my session window?

Yes. Once a Start Time and End Time are configured, PickMyTrade blocks new orders from passing through outside that window. What happens to positions already open depends on whether you’ve chosen No Close, Select An Account, or Close All.

Will my RTH window automatically adjust when Daylight Saving Time changes?

PickMyTrade’s documentation labels the fields “Eastern Time” but doesn’t state whether that tracks the DST-adjusted US clock automatically. Don’t assume either way; check your window against actual market hours in the days after each changeover.

Does PickMyTrade automatically roll my strategy to the new futures contract?

No. Session-window settings control timing only. Rolling to the new front-month contract is a change you or your TradingView alert configuration has to make; it isn’t a PickMyTrade feature.

Can I set different session windows for different accounts?

Yes. Active Hours can be applied to a specific account or to all connected accounts, and PickMyTrade now supports multiple session windows per account rather than a single block.

What’s the safest window setting if I want to hold trades overnight?

Use “No Close” so existing positions stay open when the window ends, while new entries are still blocked outside your chosen hours. “Select An Account” or “Close All” will flatten positions at the window’s close, which defeats an overnight-hold strategy.

PickMyTrade connects TradingView strategies directly to your broker. For a broader look at building session-aware futures automation, see PickMyTrade’s guide to automated futures trading systems.