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Forex Market Hours and Why It’s Important

Learn the best times for trading Forex, when the markets are open and how to use this information to improve your trading.

Home / Trader Life / Forex Market Hours and Why It’s Important

Last updated: March 27, 2024
By Hugh Kimura

Trading hourse

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It can be hard to remember which Forex trading market is open right now.

Even if you primarily stay in the same timezone, it can be easy to forget when each market opens and closes.

When you are traveling, it can be especially hard to keep track…until you get used to the timezone.

The best way to get an accurate look at which market is currently open, is to use a Forex market hours clock.

This short post will give you the one that I like best and some background on each session.

RELATED: Learn Forex Hedging in the FREE Guide Here

Be sure to bookmark this blog post so you can find it easily later.

I won't list specific times because that just confuses people (myself included).

This is much easier…

Live Forex Market Hours Clock

This is the live Forex market hours clock.

Set your current timezone and the clock will show you which market is currently open.

I have used quite a few of these clocks and I like the Baby Pips market hours calculator best.

BabyPips Forex market hours

This graphical representation is the easiest one for me to use and I hope you like it too.

Now let's take a quick look at each session and how you should treat each one.

There are slight nuances that you have to be aware of.

Here is a breakdown of the Trading Sessions

It is important to understand which market is open because of the amount of trading that happens during each session.

The more trading activity there is, the more price will move.

Here is a screenshot of the historical trading volume that is associated with each session.

This screenshot comes from the Oanda Forex market hours widget.

Keep in mind that this is not a live graph.

Use the graph above, if you want to change your timezone.

Forex market hours clock with volumes

Sydney

The Sydney market is the smallest and “opens” the trading day.

Although the markets are open 24 hours, trading volume drops off significantly when the New York session closes.

You should generally avoid entering trades during this time, because the market is less likely to move and price action can be choppy.

Trading during this time can be like watching grass grow.

Tokyo

When the Asian trading markets open, there is a slight bump in trading activity, but still not enough to warrant entering trades on most pairs.

The USDJPY can be active during this time, so if you like to trade that pair, you should keep an eye out during this time.

But otherwise, other pairs will usually be range bound and not really worth looking at.

Also keep in mind that spreads may increase during this time and it might cost you more to enter/exit a trade.

London

Now this is when the action starts. Trading will increase across all pairs and this is when it is worth entering trades.

There are several trading strategies that revolve around trading the Tokyo session breakout.

Although there is a lot of trading happening during this session, the best is yet to come.

New York

Finally, we get to the New York session.

The overlap between the Asian session and the New York session has the most trading volume during the trading day.

This is when you can see big price runs and nice tradable price action.

But this also means that you have to cut your losses faster.

Don't forget the stop losses!

Conclusion

So that is the easy way to instantly tell which Forex trading market is currently open.

Be sure to bookmark this page so you will have it, if you forget.

 

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  • The Best Times to Trade Forex

Category: Trader Life Tag: Forex Trading for Beginners, Trading for Beginners

About Hugh Kimura

Hi, I'm Hugh and I'm an independent trader. Before starting Trading Heroes in 2007, I used to work at the trading desk of a hedge fund, for one of the largest banks in the world and at an IBM Premier Business Partner.

Learn more about me here and read more of my articles here.

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About Hugh Kimura

 About Hugh Kimura

Hi, I'm Hugh. I'm an independent Trader and I started Trading Heroes in 2007.

Before starting this site, I worked at the trading desk of a hedge fund, at one of the largest banks in the world, and at an IBM Premier Business Partner.

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