Forex Market Hours - Live Forex Market Clock & Session Times

Understanding the Impact of Forex Market Hours in Your Trading Strategy

Understanding Relationship Between Currency Pairs, Trading Volume, and Time Zones

Why You Should Trade During Certain Forex Trading Hours

Why Some of the Forex Trading Hours are More Active Than Others

The Choice of Your Forex Market Hours Depends on Your Strategy

Forex Market Hours Based Strategy No# 1: Trading Price Gaps During Market Open on Monday

Forex Market Hours Based Strategy No# dua: Breakout Trading at London Opening Hours

Forex Market Hours Based Strategy No# tiga: Intraday Trading During Second Half of London Session

The Bottom Line

The FX market is open 24 hours a day from Monday (or Sunday) to Friday (or Saturday) - as one part of the world goes to sleep, another wakes up. That's why we talk about Forex market hours and Forex trading sessions - to describe where and when the different Forex trading sessions are open to trading.

When you first came to know about the global currency market, you probably came in touch with marketing materials claiming that this market remains open 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Anyone who traded equities (stocks) or any other commodities knows that stock exchanges or other markets are usually open during banking hours in a day. However, being a decentralized market, the Forex market has no rigid trading hours.

Nonetheless, the foreign exchange market is an international market that stretches from major financial centers like Sydney and Tokyo in the East to all the way to San Francisco in the West - all located in vastly different time zones. By the time traders in Tokyo go home after work, banks are not even open in New York, which operates during forex market hours est - from 8 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Because the Forex market operates in multiple time zones, it can be accessed at any time. Yet, seasoned traders know that there is an unofficial concept of Forex market hours. It starts at 7:00 am, in Sydney, Australia - at the Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) zone, which is 10 hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or GMT +10 and ends at 5:00 p.m. in New York, the United States at the Eastern Standard Time (EST) zone, which is 5 hours behind the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or GMT -lima.

Understanding Relationship Between Currency Pairs, Trading Volume, and Time Zones

You see, the dunia currency market is dominated by large banks, commercial companies taking part in import and export of goods and services, central banks, hedge funds, and retail forex traders.

Imagine that a deal was made last week between Mitsubishi in Japan and a car dealer in Australia who wants to import 200 units of Mitsubishi's latest Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs). According to the contract between two parties, the Australian car importer would settle the invoice amount on the first hour of Monday. As soon as the banks open in Tokyo, the Australian importer will need to convert its Australian Dollars to Japanese Yen in order to pay for the cars to the Japanese car manufacturer.

As the payment for 200 cars would a substantial amount, the demand for the Japanese Yen will suddenly go up early on Monday morning, which will turn the Yen bullish. As a result, the AUD/JPY will become bearish.

This is just a simple example, but this is the reason why often prices start to move, and trends are created. The point of this illustration is to make a point that when Japanese and Australian banks are open to conducting international transactions, there is a high probability that the respective currencies, such as the Australian Dollar and the Japanese Yen, will experience increased trading volume. Consequently, the prices of these currencies will fluctuate more compared to outside of the banking hours.

Why You Should Trade During Certain Forex Trading Hours

Theoretically, it is true that there is no central exchange in the Forex market, and anyone can buy and sell currencies any time of the day or any day of the week.

Nonetheless, to trade a Forex pair, you need a counterparty. To buy something you need someone else to sell you want you are trying to buy and vice versa. So, if you are trying to buy USD/JPY in the middle of the night when nobody in the United States or Japan are awake, then there is a good chance that you will have a hard time doing business. This is why in practice; you should spend your active trading hours when there are ample buyers and sellers in the market.

Even if some brokers allow trading during the weekends, the prices of various currency pairs hardly move on Saturday and Sunday. If you are a short-term day trader, who opens and closes trades within a day, trading outside banking hours in major financial centers around the world will also feel like you are trading during the weekend. Because if major financial institutions and professional traders are not placing huge orders that move the market, there is no reason for the solid trends to take place.

Hence, the concept of Forex Market Hours derives from the notion that when major financial markets are open in a given time zone, the daya tampung and liquidity in the market remains high, which in turn reduces the difference between the bid and ask prices and helps traders to fill their orders relatively easily without incurring slippage.

After all, as a retail Forex trader with limited capital, you will not be in a position to move the market. 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.

Why Some of the Forex Trading Hours are More Active Than Others

Technically speaking, if you exchange 200 U.S. 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.m. at the parking lot of the Heathrow Airport.

Figure 1: World Map Showing Time Zones of Major Financial Centers Around the World

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 isi 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 daya tampung 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 daya muat 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.