Forex Trading Hours

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Market Hours
We have discovered that the Forex market is open 24/7 Sunday night to Friday night. That does not mean the market is active all of the time. In order to make money the market must be going up or coming down, if the market is not moving or going sideways then it will be difficult to make any money. The following table shows the opening and closing times for the various daily trading sessions.

GMT and EST hours for Forex Trading

Region: City Open(GMT) Close(GMT) Open(EST) Close(EST)
Europe:London8:00 am5:00 pm3:00 am12:00 noon
Frankfort7:00 am4:00 pm2:00 am11:00 am
America:New York1:00 pm10:00 pm8:00 am5:00 pm
Chicago2:00 pm11:00 pm9:00 am6:00 pm
Asia:TokyoMidnight9:00 am7:00 pm4:00 am
Hong Kong1:00 am10:00 am8:00 pm5:00 am
Pacific:Sydney10:00 pm7:00 am5:00 pm2:00 am
Wellington10:00 pm6:00 am5:00 pm1:00 am


These times will differ by an hour in summer and winter depending on daylight saving. You will notice that between the sessions there is an overlap where 2 markets are open at the same time. From 3-4 a.m. EST, both the Tokyo and London markets are open. From 8-12 a.m. EST, both the London and U.S. markets are open.

These overlap periods are the busiest market times because there is a lot more volume when two markets are open at the same time.

The busiest times of the week seem to be Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday can be a strange day with very quiet periods awaiting a fundamental announcement and then very volatile once the news breaks, sometimes causing whipsaw with very large price swings.

When the UK or USA have public holidays the market is generally flat and a day off might be a good idea.

Sundays in many parts of the world, markets are closed. In the regions where it does open on a Sunday it is generally very quiet and not worth trading.

A good exercise will be to record the daily pip movements for the currencies you want to trade. This will give you a good idea of the average market movements each day. If you are not a full time trader and prefer to watch the market, then recording the average pip movements for the specific times you trade will also give you a good idea of the market movement for those times.

When major fundamental announcements are made, no one really knows where price will go. Spreads tend to widen, prices become unpredictable and whipsaw can occur. Interpretation of the reports are also very difficult, so as a novice trader rather stay out of the market until things have settled. If you are in a trade make sure you protect your open positions with a stop loss prior to the news release.

Hopefully this chapter will help you to decide the best trading times to suit you and the best currency pairs to trade during that time.


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