Trading Sessions

Now that you know what forex is, why you should trade it, and who makes up the forex market, it's about time you learned when you can trade.

Yes, it is true that the forex market is open 24 hours a day, but that doesn't mean it's always active the whole day.

You can make money trading when the market moves up, and you can even make money when the market moves down.

BUT you will have a very difficult time trying to make money when the market doesn't move at all.

And believe us, there will be times when the market is as still as the victims of Medusa. This lesson will help determine when the best times of the day are to trade.

Market Hours

Before looking at the best times to trade, we must look at what a 24 hour day in the forex world looks like.

The forex market can be broken up into four major trading sessions: the Sydney session, the Tokyo session, the London session, and the New York session. Below is a table of the open and close times for each session:

Time Zone	EST	GMT
Sydney Open Sydney Close	5:00 PM 2:00 AM	10:00 PM 7:00 AM
Tokyo Open Tokyo Close	7:00 PM 4:00 AM	12:00 AM 9:00 AM
London Open London Close	3:00 AM 12:00 PM	8:00 AM 5:00 PM
New York Open New York Close	8:00 AM 5:00 PM	12:00 PM 10:00 PM

You can see that in between each session, there is a period of time where two sessions are open at the same time. From 2:00-4:00 am EST, both the Tokyo and Sydney markets are open, and from 8:00-12:00 am EST, both the London and New York 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. This makes sense because during those times, all the market participants are wheelin' and dealin', which means that more money is transferring hands.

Let's take a look at the average pip movement of the major currency pairs during each trading session.

Pair	Tokyo	London	New York
EUR/USD	76	114	92
GBP/USD	92	127	99
USD/JPY	51	66	59
AUD/USD	77	83	81
NZD/USD	62	72	70
USD/CAD	57	96	96
USD/CHF	67	102	83
EUR/JPY	102	129	107
GBP/JPY	118	151	132
AUD/JPY	98	107	103
EUR/GBP	78	61	47
EUR/CHF	79	109	84

From the table, you will see that the European session normally provides the most movement.

Let's take a more in depth look at each of the session, as well as those periods when the sessions overlap.

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