FTB-C000055 / Market data field

Event Time

Event time is the timestamp assigned to when a market or business event occurred at its source.

Also known assource event timeevent timestamp

Intermediate 16 linked topicsPublished

Definitions

In plain terms

For a trade, event time aims to represent when the execution happened, not when your system received or processed the message.

Technical

Event-time provenance must identify timestamp owner, clock domain, precision, synchronization assumptions, and correction semantics before events are ordered across sources.

Scope

Event time can differ from publication, receipt, availability, and processing times.

Examples

  • A governed dataset records event time explicitly instead of inferring it from an ambiguous field.

Common misconceptions

  • Event Time does not have one universal meaning without its stated market, source, and time context.

Concept relationships

Related

Contrasts with

Required by

Where this concept is used

Tutorials planned

These catalogued topics use this concept, but their complete build has not shipped yet.

  • D01-F01-A01 Important
  • D01-F01-A02 Important
  • D01-F01-A05 Important
  • D01-F01-A07 Important
  • D01-F02-A04 Important
  • D01-F02-A05 Important
  • D01-F02-A06 Important
  • D01-F03-A01 Important
  • D01-F03-A02 Important
  • D01-F03-A03 Important
  • D01-F03-A05 Primary
  • D01-F04-A02 Prerequisite
  • D03-F01-A05 Important
  • D06-F01-A01 Important
  • D07-F02-A06 Important

Evidence and governance

  1. FIX Latest Online Specification — Market Data FIX Trading Community · official standard

    Supports: preferred label, short definition, technical definition

    Limits: Implementations use negotiated profiles; FIX fields do not impose one universal feed, stale-data, deduplication, or reconciliation policy.

  2. Fintech Builder Glossary Definition Contract The Fintech Builder · internal governed contract

    Supports: variant distinction

    Limits: Defines governed platform behavior rather than claiming these policies are universally prescribed by external McClellan methodology.

Reviewed by
Last reviewed
2026-07-26
Next review
2027-07-26
Record status
published
Written by

Fintech engineer building market-data and financial systems, and the author of every article, glossary record, and reference implementation on The Fintech Builder.