ContraTradeTime (FIX tag 438)

UTCTimestampFIX 4.4FIX 4.2

ContraTradeTime (tag 438) is an UTCTimestamp field defined in FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2. It appears in 1 message type, always optionally.

At a glance

Tag: 438
Name: ContraTradeTime
Datatype: UTCTimestamp (String)
Format: YYYYMMDD-HH:MM:SS[.sss]
Dialects: FIX 4.4 and FIX 4.2
Messages: 1

What the specification says

FIX 4.4

Identifies the time of the trade with the ContraBroker (375). (always expressed in UTC (Universal Time Coordinated, also known as "GMT")

FIX 4.2

Identifies the time of the trade with the ContraBroker. (always expressed in UTC (Universal Time Coordinated, also known as "GMT")

Descriptions are quoted from the FIX Orchestra sources under the Apache 2.0 licence.

A real message using tag 438

ExecutionReport · FIX 4.4

Tag	Field	Wire value	Meaning
8	BeginString	FIX.4.4
9	BodyLength	215
35	MsgType	8	Execution Report
49	SenderCompID	BOARTEAM
56	TargetCompID	COUNTERPARTY
34	MsgSeqNum	2
52	SendingTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
37	OrderID	ORD-10042
382	NoContraBrokers2 entries	2	repeating group
375	ContraBroker	EXAMPLE
438	ContraTradeTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
375	ContraBroker	EXAMPLE
438	ContraTradeTime	20240101-12:00:00.000
17	ExecID	EXEC-88117
150	ExecType	0	New
39	OrdStatus	0	New
54	Side	1	Buy
151	LeavesQty	0
14	CumQty	1000000
6	AvgPx	1.09215
10	CheckSum	203

Edit and decode it yourself

Shown with | separators for readability. On the wire FIX uses SOH (0x01), an invisible control byte — and because BodyLength and CheckSum are computed over the actual bytes, the two forms have different checksums. Both are valid and both decode here.

Open in the full decoder →

Generated from the FIX 4.4 dictionary and verified at build time: it parses and validates with no issues. Open the decoder to try your own message.

Where tag 438 appears

Requiredness is a property of the message, not of the field: the same tag can be optional in one message and conditionally required in another.

Message	MsgType	FIX 4.4	FIX 4.2	Where in the message
ExecutionReport	8	Optional	Optional	inside the ContraGrp component

Wire format

A UTC date and time. The fractional-seconds part is optional, so two timestamps can be equal but not byte-identical. @boarteam/fix keeps the value as a string; format rules are checked by validate(), which reports validate/invalid-value rather than throwing.

Read tag 438 in TypeScript

decode.tsts

import { createFixEngine } from "@boarteam/fix";import { dictionary } from "@boarteam/fix-dict-fix44";const fix = createFixEngine(dictionary);const { message, issues } = fix.parse(raw);const field = message.fields[438];field?.name;   // "ContraTradeTime"field?.raw;    // the verbatim wire stringfield?.value;  // coerced to a string

Decode this in your own code

The same engine that produced the decoded example above is an Apache-2.0 npm package with zero runtime dependencies. It runs in Node and in the browser, and parse() returns problems as data instead of throwing.

npm i @boarteam/fix @boarteam/fix-dict-fix44

Try the decoder Source on GitHub