Forex Market Hours  

It is very important to understand the Forex Trading (Market) hours if you decide to trade foreign exchange (Forex). Since you can trade 24 hours a day and 5.5 days per week, you do not only have a big freedom in your working time but you have more time for trading as well.

The time animation shows you live which markets are open at the moment. The red time line flows from right to left.

If you imagine that there is more time for trading you realize that there must be more trading volume offered. This round the clock trading allows more flexibility which you won’t see on other markets like the CFD and Futures markets.

As a real 24 hours market with 5.5 days per week the trading begins in Australia, undergoes the opening and closing of the most important markets in Asia, Europe, USA and comes back to again to Australia.

The activity of the markets is very dependant from the market hours. The single currency pairs have their own peaks of the volatility. It can be practiced for trading but also involves a high risk.

Asia (01:00 am - 10:00 am)(GMT+1)

On this markets there are traded mostly the currency pairs GBP/JPY and USD/JPY. Thereby they are very active compared to EUR/GBP and EUR/CHF.

Europe (08:00 am - 6:00 pm)(GMT+1)

In Europe, London there is the biggest Forex market of the world with more than 30% of all trades. Every important bank is represented there by traders. The most currency pairs have at this time their biggest volatility.

USA (2:00 pm - 9:00 pm) (GMT+1)

New York is the second largest forex market of the world. Here are made about 20% of the worlds’ foreign exchange trades. The market is most active when the market hours of Europe and USA overlaps.

Interferences

The daily trading volumes are determined by the open forex markets. By overlapping of two global markets like USA and Europe there is a bigger trading volume. At these times the forex market is more volatile as well. Most active is the market when the US, European and Asian forex markets overlaps.