Foreign Exchange Market Hours: Is It Possible To Trade This Market Round The Clock?

The currency exchange hours stretch from Monday morning in Sydney, Australia to Friday afternoon in New York. During that period the market is open at some place around the globe at all hours of the day or night.

However, it is not a 24/7 market because it does shut down on weekends. 24/5 would be more appropriate.

If you need to know the specific times that the markets open and close, you have to take time zones into account. It is very simple when expressed in UTC. This is Universal Coordinated Time, earlier known as Greenwich Mean Time. This is the regular (winter) time in Greenwich, London which is the point of zero longitude on the globe.

New York is 5 hours behind the UK so the global forex market opens and closes at 17.00 Sunday/Friday in New York, 14.00 on the US west coast, 11 pm in Germany, 8.00 Monday/Saturday in Sydney.

Things get a little more difficult when you start to try to take summer time daylight saving into account. This makes one hour difference in countries that observe it. But daylight saving works in a different way in the southern hemisphere lands such as Australia which have summer season from September to March instead of March to September.

The hours of the different most important national markets are as follows:

Sydney: 10.00 pm to 7.00 am UTC
Tokyo: 12 midnight to 9 am UTC
London: 8 am to 5 pm UTC
New York: 1 pm to 10 pm UTC

Or we can express that in EST (Eastern US time):

Sydney: 5 pm to 2 am EST
Tokyo: 7.00 pm to 4.00 am EST
London: 3.00 am to 12.00 noon EST
New York: 8 am to 5 pm EST

You can see that these are equivalent to 24 hour cover.

Anyhow, this does not necessarily mean that trading will be favorable at all of these times. Just after a primary market opens, the prices may be particularly volatile and erratic. A lot of traders will stay out of the forex market for up to an hour four times a day when the financial markets are waking up in these major cities.

The US dollar is the most traded currency by far, involved in 2.5 times as many trades as its next rival, the euro. This implies that events concerning the USA have a bigger impact on the financial markets than news from other countries. The New York market starts to slow down around 3 pm local time (8 pm UTC) and if you are invested in a US dollar pair, this could be a good time to stop trading for the day.

So theoretically you could trade 24 hours a day from Sunday night to Friday night. Automated program in the form of a forex robot can even make this physically feasible. Even so, a cautious trader will pick his times and will not be invested during all of the forex market hours. Furthermore, trusting hard-earned capital on a robot is a risk many people are not willing to take. A much better idea is using forex signals. With reliable forex signals you can improve your risk-reward ratio dramatically. There are numerous forex signal websites online, but always check out the past performance, and test the signals in simulation trading, prior to starting to trade on real account.

FX Trading Capital - How Much Do You Need To Be Profitable In Currency Trading
Another problem with starting forex trading with a very small account balance is that you will be tempted to overtrade. You may begin to treat it as a game.

Mental Aspects Of Currency Trading: To Be Able To Win, You Have To Be Able To Lose
You have probably heard before that it is important not to let your emotions rule your trading. Making decisions based on our feelings of fear, greed or anxiety is a surefire way to lose money in the foreign exchange markets.

Time And Timing In Day Trades - Understanding The Cycles And The Best Times To Trade Futures And Forex
It is of utmost importance to understand the time that you choose to trade in, and know what you can potentially expect at that time of day. This differs from instrument to instrument so it is important to study market behavior for your particular instruments.

Currency Trading Fundamentals: How To Act On Forex Events And How To Forecast Their Impacts On The Foreign Exchange
If you want to make money in the forex market then you will need to know foreign exchange basics. You may have a good mathematical understanding of trends and charts but it is also important to understand the foundation on which the currency trading markets are based.

Basic Forex Trading Strategies Applying Trend Lines: Can You Indeed Make Money With Them?
There are many forex strategies that you can master or devise for yourself but one of the simplest involves using trend lines to indicate when you should buy or sell.

What Is Yen Carry Trade And What Type Of Effect It May Have On Your Forex Trading Results?
The JPY is the currency most frequently involved in carry trade. This is because over the past years it has consistently been a major currency with the lowest interest rate. The BoJ, which controls Japanese interest rates, has set them at a a very low level.

Foreign Exchange Trading Techniques - Articles And Verdicts
I have been trading Forex for a living for over 7 years now and have come across numerous Forex trading systems and methods. After many trials and errors I've come to the conclusion that simple is best, therefore I have reduced my trading into 3 categories.

Related Articles

Resources

Firesales Exposed