It has to meet the needs of traders in Cairo, Chicago, and Canberra equally, and because of the different time zones around the world, the Forex market remains open. Forex markets are able to remain open for 24 hours because it is a decentralised market. The Forex market is comprised of various computer networks around the world, most of which are controlled by banks or brokers.

This makes Forex trading very convenient, no matter where in the world you live. Around the world, there is always a need for currencies. From central banks to corporations and down to the common man, there is always a need to transact in currencies. Each day sees the Forex markets begin the trading day in Australia, followed by Asia, then by Europe, and finally by North and South America.

And the merry-go-round simply continues all week. As trading closes in one region, it begins in another in a hour cycle. As it comes to the final hours of trading in North and South America, a new day is just beginning again in Australia and New Zealand, and the cycle repeats. No single day is the same as any other in the Forex market, either. Economies around the world are in a constant state of change, and political changes can also have an impact on the relative value of currencies.

Companies will buy and sell currencies to conduct foreign trade and to pay for employees located in different countries around the world.

Because we have a global economy, we also have the need for a Forex market that operates 24 hours a day to accommodate the needs of governments and businesses in every corner of the globe. In fact, there is no area without hour Forex trade. If you are going to trade currencies, it is important to know which times are the most active in the FX markets.

These are the best times to trade because the liquidity at these times lowers trading costs, and price moves are more pronounced during these times. You will solely rely on larger players like banks and institutional investors to create the trends and hopefully catch a few to turn a profit. This is why short-term retail Forex traders should trade only during active banking hours and avoid looking for trading opportunities when the forex market hours clock stops ticking.

Technically speaking, if you exchange U. Dollars to get some British Pound for pocket money at an Airport Foreign Exchange Kiosk after arriving in London, in the middle of the night, it would be also considered as a foreign exchange trade.

However, as you can guess by now, large billion-dollar, cross-border, transactions do not happen at 3 a. at the parking lot of the Heathrow Airport.

These market-moving transactions happen among large banks during their respective banking hours. Moreover, not all branches of a certain big bank will do these large-scale cross-border transactions. For example, a small branch of the Bank of America in Louisville, Kentucky. However, its downtown Manhattan branch in New York will certainly engage in large-scale foreign exchange deals.

Similarly, a branch of the Swiss multinational investment bank, UBS Group AG, in Bangkok will have a lower transaction volume in the Forex market compared to its branch located in a major Asian financial hub like Singapore. Hence, banking hours in the time zone of major financial centers like Tokyo in Japan, Singapore City in Singapore, Frankfurt in Germany, London in the United Kingdom, and New York in the United States generate the bulk of the trading volume in the Forex market. Therefore, liquidity and volatility are usually higher when markets are open in these time zones.

Besides banks engaged in commercial cross-border currency transactions, institutional investors and hedge funds speculating in the international stock exchanges also generate a high volume of foreign exchange transactions.

Hedge funds with international exposure often buy and sell a large number of stocks across the globe to diversify their portfolios. Coincidentally, some of the major forex exchange hubs also host the major stock exchanges. For example, the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange are located in, you guessed it right, in New York; The London Stock Exchange is located in London, and the Tokyo Shoken Torihikijo is based in Tokyo.

So, cross-border investments that require moving funds from one end of the globe to another generally contributes to a higher level of trading volume in the global foreign exchange market. Furthermore, when banks and stock exchanges in more than one major financial centers are open simultaneously, the trading volume and liquidity go up substantially.

This is why the beginning of the New York trading session has usually generated the bulk of the trading opportunities for short-term traders because it opens when the London trading session is also open across the Atlantic. Hence, if you overlay the trading volatility in a forex market hours chart, you can see that it spikes up when trading begins in the financial center located next in the time zone.

And so Overlapping hours of the London trading session and the New York trading session is the best time to trade forex, since the market is most active. If you are a swing trader or a trend trader who likes to keep positions open overnight or several days at a time, then paying attention to the forex market hours chart in figure 2 may not be that important.

However, most Forex traders are day traders and different trading sessions based on the time zone and geographic location of the financial centers around the world will have a substantial impact on the bottom line. While the actual trading strategy you have may not change, knowing when to trade can certainly help you stop wasting time looking for trades when are no trading opportunities in the market.

Furthermore, success in Forex trading in highly depends on timing, as trends can often reverse and wipe out the profits in your open trades. Knowing when to enter and exit the market based on active Forex market hour can have an immensely positive impact on your profitability and aid in building the confidence you need to succeed in this agile market environment.

Let's take a look at three major Forex market hour-based strategies you can apply today to improve your win rate and increase profitability. Price gaps are the areas on a price chart that represents a missing price data in a chart.

While a lot of brokers also show price gaps in line charts, it is best illustrated in a bar or candlestick chart. When a currency pair sharply goes up or down with no transaction in between, it is represented in a price gap.

While most brokers suspend trading during the weekend, the fact is that economic news and geopolitical events still occur on Saturdays and Sundays. As a result, the valuation of different currency pairs can change after the brokers suspend trading on Friday.

When the market re-opens on Monday morning, at a. in Sydney time, you will often see that there is a huge gap between the closing price of Friday and the opening price on Monday. For example, let's say a hostile country like Iran might have announced to test a nuclear weapon after the market closed on Friday.

As a result, the value of the U. Dollar may drop during the weekend. Trading price gaps on Mondays can be very profitable as most often gaps are filled before the actual trend takes place, be it the continuation of the trend in the direction of the price gap or a complete reversal. While the uptrend continued throughout Monday, a bearish retracement started on Tuesday, July 2, , and the gap was filled before the uptrend resumed.

Hence, often major trends start and end during the London Forex market hours. If you are a Forex trader who applies breakout trading strategies, it makes perfect sense to look for breakout trades at the opening hours of the London market open. To do so, of course, you need to trade in smaller time frames like the 5-minute or the minute charts.

Country Stock Exchange Local time EST GMT Australia ASX — Australia Securities Exchange am — pm pm — am pm — am New Zealand NZX — New Zealand Stock Exchange am — pm pm — pm pm — am Asia Stock Market Hours Markets in Asia and some markets in the Middle East close for lunch. There are no "lunch hours" in the rest of the world. For Asian Markets most trading is observed in the beginning and the end of the day, with much lower activity during mid-day hours.

Country Stock Exchange Local time EST GMT Japan TSE — Tokyo Stock Exchange am — pm lunch am — am pm — am lunch pm — pm am — am lunch am — am Shanghai SSE — Shanghai Stock Exchange am — pm lunch am — pm pm — am lunch pm — am am — am lunch am — am Hong Kong HKEX — Hong Kong Stock Exchange am — pm lunch pm — pm pm — am lunch am — am am — am lunch am — am South Korea KRX — South Korea Stock Exchange am — pm pm — am am — am India NSE — National Stock Exchange of India am — pm pm — am am — am.

Forex trading is a high risk investment.

As Forex traders, it is very important to know what is the availability of the market. Moreover, it is important to understand how do the different trading hours or sessions impact your trading strategy. The Forex market is open hours a day from Sunday PM GMT to Friday PM GMT, this includes most holidays worldwide.

Please note that market liquidity is very low at the start of the trading week. Therefore, many traders consider the market to be open only for the 5 weekdays. Learning the details of each session is key to identify market liquidity levels and spot the optimal times to place an order. If we go from right to left just as the sun rises — from East to West , then you will notice that the first major session to open is the Sydney Forex Market session.

This session is open from PM GMT to AM GMT or from PM ET to AM ET. Despite the low market volume versus other major sessions, when Sydney opens is when the Australian Dollar and New Zealand Dollar, in pairing with the US Dollar, get to the trading action. The Tokyo session follows shortly after. This session is also called the Asian session, because right after Tokyo large economic hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong start waking up.

The Asian session starts around AM GMT, when most of Europe is in a deep sleep. This is why you often hear European traders talking about waking up at 3 AM to trade the Asian session before going back to bed. Also, you may have already noticed that some Forex sessions overlap quite significantly.

For example, the Australian session and Asian session. You can use this to your advantage knowing that pairs like AUDJPY and NZDJPY will have the highest volatility during the Forex Market Hours of these two sessions. Moreover, by the time the Brits wake up, other major economic hubs like Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Zurich have already started into their Forex Market Hours for the day.

An interesting observation is that the Forex Market Hours of the Tokyo and London sessions overlap for approximately 1 hour varies for other European countries.

You can and probably should use this fact to your advantage. This means that all the crosses of European currencies and the JPY will have the highest volatility at the start of the European session. So if you are trading the GBPJPY you can simply carry out a few powerful trades between and AM GMT, and then you are free for the day. Forex market hours of the US start with New York.

This is because New York is one of the biggest financial centers in the world as well as being the East-most major city in America. The American session starts when Europe is only half-way through.

Also, please note that you are going to get an extremely fast-paced and volatile market. A lot of the major pairs like EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDCHF experience massive movements and specific patterns during this time.

In fact, we created a holistic trading strategy for the GBPUSD just based on this one fact. The strategy is called Simple System and you can find it in this course. It uses a profitable pattern that we discovered for GBPUSD. As you could see from the information above, there are three main overlaps when you can see higher market activity, representing the best times for Forex traders:.

The weekend is the best time for planning. No open markets, no news, no economic events to disturb you. Elections, referendums, or similar events may cause market gaps, which can delay the trigger of StopLoss orders. You should assess the risk to take the following week. This will depend on your trading strategy and profile. Scalpers, swing traders, and investors have a different time horizon. For this reason, they may have different expectations regarding the duration of a trade.

Scalpers will strive for precision and accuracy. However, swing traders will strive to get the right market direction. Finally, investors will choose the time, rather than price, for positioning. One of the main reasons why the Forex market moves come from economic data or news. Fortunately, these events are scheduled in the economic calendar. Then, traders know in advance that markets get volatile during specific hours of a day.

As the NFP reading took place during Feb 7 at PM GMT ET , you can see how the price spiked. The main reason for this volatility was the higher-than-expected NFP value of k. However, you can notice that after a couple of hours the price stabilized and continued its horizontal trend.

This kind of strong price movement can distort your strategy and even impact your trades. So it is always handy to keep an economic calendar while planning your trading week. Whatever your trading strategy, it is always beneficial to keep in mind the Forex Market Hours of the Four Forex sessions. Different sessions are dominated by different types of traders, banks, governments and, as we saw, — currency pairs.

Taking this into account will certainly give you a competitive advantage. The Forex Market Hours Map is in HD over p resolution, so you can even use it as your desktop background if you like.

Choose your timezone from this link. December 19, at pm , Marry David said:. December 05, at pm , Aaronn Kaminski said:. February 08, at pm , JoRo said:. Hi Kirill, I found a this link to another 24hr market clock. Does it provide the same features as your world map? February 11, at pm , Kirill said:. October 08, at am , fx said:.

Your email address will not be published. Forex Trading Hours — What, Who and When? Muhammad Awais February 12, 5 comments. Table of Contents 1 Forex Trading Hours Explained 1. What are you waiting for?

START LEARNING FOREX TODAY! Sign me up! Tags: Forex Market Hours Forex Time Forex Timezones share This:. December 05, at pm , Aaronn Kaminski said: Great resources! February 08, at pm , JoRo said: Hi Kirill, I found a this link to another 24hr market clock. html Reply. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. as seen on:.

Almost there! Learn the Top-5 Forex Trading Techniques. Enter your email below:. Learn the 3 Forex Strategy Cornerstones. Enter your email address below:. Get your Super Smoother Indicator! GMT: from PM GMT to AM GMT ET: from PM ET to AM ET. GMT: from AM GMT to AM GMT ET: from PM ET to AM ET. GMT: from AM GMT to PM GMT ET: from AM ET to PM ET. GMT: from PM GMT to PM GMT ET: from AM ET to PM ET.

Register Now. Forex Market Hours Based Strategy No 1: Trading Price Gaps During Market Open on Monday Price gaps are the areas on a price chart that represents a missing price data in a chart. While the uptrend continued throughout Monday, a bearish retracement started on Tuesday, July 2, , and the gap was filled before the uptrend resumed. Johannesburg Stock Exchange Nairobi Securities Exchange Nigerian-Stock-Exchange Rwanda Stock Exchange Botswana Stock Exchange Namibian Stock Exchange Casablanca Stock Exchange Stock Exchange of Mauritius. If you are a swing trader or a trend trader who likes to keep positions open overnight or several days at a time, then paying attention to the forex market hours chart in figure 2 may not be that important. Then, traders know in advance that markets get volatile during specific hours of a day. Not intended for use as an accurate time source.

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