Trading Hours

Learn to trade Trading Hours

Market Hours

The forex can be broken up into three major trading sessions: the Tokyo Session, the London Session, and the U.S. Session. Below is a table of the open and close times for each session:

From 3-4 a.m. EST, both the Tokyo and London markets are open, and from 8-12 a.m. EST, both the London and U.S. markets are open. Naturally, these are the busiest times during the market because there is more volume when two markets are open at the same time.

As you can see, the London session usually shows the most movement.

Now let's see which days of the week are best for trading...

Best Days of the Week to Trade Forex
Ok, so now we know that the London session is the busiest out of all the other sessions, but there are also certain days in the week where all the markets tend to show more movement. Below is a chart of average pip range for the 4 major pairs for each day of the week:

You can see that during the middle of the week is where the most movement is seen on all 4 major pairs.

So based on these three simple pieces, we’ve learned when the busiest times of the market are. These are the best times to trade because they give us a higher chance of success.

Non Trading Days

Fridays: Fridays are very unpredictable. This is a good day to trade if you want to lose all the profit you made during the rest of the week.

Sundays: There is very little movement on these days. Trade this day if you want to start off your week with NEGATIVE pips.

Holidays: Banks are closed which means very little volume for whatever country is having the holiday. Holidays are great to trade when you would rather lose your money than take a day off and enjoy the other finer things in life.

News Reports: No one really knows where the price will go when a news report comes out. It’s true that news reports will affect the long term trend of the price, but as far as short term goes, currencies tend to pull surprises no matter what the news report stated. You should only trade these events if you are a psychic and are always right when predicting the future.

What to do if you can’t trade during the busy market hours
If you live in a time zone or you have a day job, then you probably can’t sit in front of a computer during the busy market hours. If this describes you, then I have a few solutions for you:

Move to a better time zone.
Trade at work
Become a swing or position trader.
Trade a different session

THE CHOICE IS YOURS!

Summary

Best times to trade:
When 2 sessions are overlapping: 3-4am EST and 8am-12pm EST
The London session is the busiest out of the other two.
The middle of the week typically shows the most movement.

Worst times to trade:
Fridays
Sundays
Holidays
News Events (unless you are trading based on the news)