Currencies trade around the clock on weekdays, but not at the same pace all day. Activity follows the business hours of the big financial centers, and spreads, volume and the size of price moves change as each one opens and closes. The clock below shows which sessions are open right now, converted to your own time zone.
Session times use the usual business hours in each center: Sydney 7:00 to 16:00, Tokyo 9:00 to 18:00, London 8:00 to 17:00 and New York 8:00 to 17:00 local time, with daylight saving applied automatically. The market as a whole trades from Sunday 17:00 to Friday 17:00 New York time. Liquidity can be thin on public holidays. The bars show today in your time zone, and the red line marks the current time.
How the trading day is divided
There is no single exchange for spot forex. Banks, brokers and funds trade with each other directly, so “market hours” really means the hours when the main dealing centers are staffed. Traders usually split the day into four sessions named after Sydney, Tokyo, London and New York. The exact boundaries are a convention, and different sources use slightly different times.
The week starts on Sunday afternoon in New York, which is Monday morning in Sydney and Tokyo. It ends when New York closes on Friday at 17:00 local time. Over the weekend most brokers stop quoting prices entirely, which is why Monday’s opening price can be some distance from Friday’s close.
What tends to happen in each session
The Asian session, covering Sydney and Tokyo, is generally the quietest stretch for EUR/USD and GBP/USD. Pairs involving the yen, the Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar see more of their activity then, and data from Japan, Australia, New Zealand and China lands in these hours.
London is the largest center for currency trading, and its morning usually brings a jump in volume and volatility. Many European data releases come out during the London session.
When New York opens, the two biggest centers overlap for a few hours. That overlap is typically the most liquid part of the day for the major dollar pairs, and it is also when most US economic data is published, including the monthly jobs report. After London closes, activity in the dollar pairs usually thins out into the New York afternoon.
Liquidity affects what you pay to trade. Spreads on most pairs are tightest when several centers are open and widest in the gap after New York closes and before Asia gets going, especially around the daily rollover at 17:00 New York time.
Watch the clock changes
The United States, Europe and Australia switch to and from daylight saving time on different dates. The US moves its clocks on the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November. The UK and the EU change on the last Sunday of March and the last Sunday of October. Australia’s southern states, including New South Wales, run on the opposite cycle, and Japan does not use daylight saving at all. For a few weeks each spring and autumn, the overlap between sessions shifts by an hour compared with what you are used to. The clock above handles all of this automatically.
Session times are a guide
A session label tells you when activity usually picks up. It does not tell you what any particular pair will do. Holidays count as well: when London or New York is closed for a public holiday, volume drops noticeably even though prices are still quoted. Keep an economic calendar alongside this clock, because a scheduled central bank decision or data release can move a pair far more than the time of day does.
For sizing trades once you have picked your hours, see the position size calculator.
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