Forex Education

Trading Times

The last thing you need to know before you can open a demo account and get used to taking trades is trading times. I have already that the market is open 24 hours a day 5 days a week. During the week there is always a country open for trading that's willing to take your money.

Each country has its session throughout each 24 hours period over the 5 days the market is open. You will often here traders saying'the London session' or 'the Asian session'. This simply means the time that London or the time that Asia is open for business. The table below shows you each session and the open/close time.

Market	U.S. EST	GMT	A.U. EST
Sydney Open Sydney Close	5:00 pm 1:00 am	10:00 pm 6:00 am	08:00 am 4:00 pm
Tokyo Open Tokyo Close	7:00 pm 4:00 am	12:00 pm 9:00 am	10:00 pm 7:00 am
Europe Open Europe Close	3:00 am 11:30 am	8:00 am 4:30 pm	5:00 pm 1:30 am
London Open London Close	3:00 am 12:00 pm	8:00 am 5:00 pm	5:00 pm 2:00 am
New York Open New York Close	8:00 am 5:00 pm	1:00 pm 10:00 pm	10:00 pm 7:00 am

When should I trade?

Anybody want to take a guess which session has the most movement?

If you said New York you are wrong! The time of day with most movement is the London/European session. The London session makes up 60% of all daily trading in the Forex market.

What it really comes down to is your trading style. Some people have small goals of a few pips and are able to trade the less volatile Asian session. It is not absolutely vital to be around for the London session.

Pairs and Times

You can also trade different pairs. Some pairs are more active at certain times than others:

- EUR/USD: During the Tokyo session, the Euro only makes up 15% of all volume and with the Euro being a slow moving pair anyway trading it in the Tokyo session is near useless. However when we hit the London session 39% of all Forex volume is attributed to the Euro. Therefore the best time to trade EUR/USD is the London session.

- GBP/USD: Much like the Euro, Cable moves very little during the Tokyo session. Most of the movement remains contained for the London session where it accounts for 24% of all Forex volume.

- USD/JPY: Here is one for all of you non London session guys. During the Tokyo session USD/JPY amazingly accounts for 78% of all Forex volume. In other words if you are trading the Asian session you want to be looking at USD/JPY.

- GBP/JPY: This pair is mixed since it is half GBP (Active in London) and half JPY (Active in Asian session). Basically GBP/JPY is active all day so watch out for this one.

Note: When I say 39% of all volume is in the EUR/USD I do not mean that it has the greatest pip movement it means more traders are trading it. How many pips a pair actually moves is based on the pair itself.