Control horizontal scale for CandlestickChart?

Questions
1

The documentation for CandlestickChart says:
“The dates are considered an ordered sequence of events, and are not shown
on an absolute time scale.”
However, I don’t understand why there should be such a difference between the following:

CandlestickChart[{{{2017, 1, 1}, {90, 94, 80, 85}}, {{2018, 1, 2}, {81, 125, 70, 120}}}]
CandlestickChart[{{{2018, 1, 1}, {90, 94, 80, 85}}, {{2018, 1, 2}, {81, 125, 70, 120}}}]

The only difference is the year in the first element. The resultant charts are:

candles.jpg
candles.jpg2194×558 30.7 KB

I did try removing the month and day from the 2017/2018 code, but the chart was still SCRUNCHED.
If that is resolved, how can I eliminate the grey “discontinuity” bars in the first (2017,2018) chart?

Using Mathematica 11.3.0

2

The gray bars are showing year separation. Look at the output of the following:

CandlestickChart[{{{2017, 1, 1}, {90, 94, 80, 85}}, {{2017, 12, 
    31}, {81, 125, 70, 120}}}] 
CandlestickChart[{{{2017, 1, 30}, {90, 94, 80, 85}}, {{2017, 12, 
    1}, {81, 125, 70, 120}}}]

Edited to add images

Candlesticks.bmp (98 KB)