Understanding Forex Trading Hours
Forex Trading Hours is a more complex issue than one might imagine. Officially, the foreign exchange market is open 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. It's possible to trade "round the clock," non-stop, excluding weekends. However, those who practice Forex trading know that, in reality, there are more specific trading hours, and that, in fact, it's not advisable to trade during certain times: it's as if the market is closed or inactive.
What are the Forex Trading hours? They are highly variable and depend on the currency pair being traded. Generally, they follow the hours of the world's stock exchanges. When the "markets" are closed, liquidity dwindles, making it truly disadvantageous to trade. The reason? The flow of information and events that, in one way or another, affect the foreign exchange market and represent its raison d'être, diminishes.
A session clock you can set to your own time zone
Not everyone can remember the opening and closing times of international markets by heart, and for anyone who travels the times move anyway: when your time zone changes, so does the hour at which each market opens and closes on your own clock.
The forex market hours page on this site answers that in your own time zone. It shows which sessions are open at this moment, the overlaps that stack two trading centres on top of each other, and the hours each market actually moves, measured on hourly candles rather than asserted. Daylight saving is read from the real time zones, so the rows slide by an hour on their own when a country changes its clocks.
Market Opening and Closing Times
It is still worth knowing the opening times in the time zone you actually live in. Here is a brief review, written against GMT + 01:00, which is central European winter time. Note that this is a fixed reference: when the clocks change, every hour below shifts with them, and the two sides of the Atlantic do not change on the same date. The market hours page applies daylight saving on its own, so it does not need this caveat.
Sydney. The Australian market is the smallest in terms of trading volume, but it's also the one that opens the day, at least from a European perspective. It opens at 11 PM and closes at 8 AM. Traders don't like to "enter" during this time slot as liquidity is scarce, and prices can therefore be quite variable.
Tokyo. It's the second "earliest" market. It opens at 1 AM and closes at 10 AM. It's a very important market, not only because it's fairly liquid but especially because it sets the tone for the day, offering a preview of the direction that London and New York will take. It's the first market, in fact, to discount the effects of the most important events, such as the American elections (the results of which are published overnight). Forex traders don't often enter during this time slot, but they occasionally use it to guide the following day's trades. It's a different story if the traded pairs include those containing the yen.
London. It's open from 9 AM to 6 PM. It's among the main markets, so trading really gets underway during its time slot. The trading volume has an initial peak coinciding with the closing of Tokyo, and a second peak in the middle, when New York opens.
New York. It's the most important market by far. It opens at 2 PM and closes at 11 PM. During this time slot, there is the maximum peak in trading, specifically in the half-hour preceding the opening of the Sydney stock exchange. Traders' activity becomes frantic; those who can close positions do so, if only to avoid the overnight.
