We all know by now that forex is a highly dynamic market with lots of price swings in a single minute. This characteristic allows you to enter the market many times a day and gain some profit from the trades.
You can easily find out an appropriate time to enter into the forex market when the activity or the volumes of transactions are the highest. When we consider the working hours of the market, we must remember three facts:
- There are three major markets -- London, New York, and Tokyo
- The working hours are throughout the day – it starts from Sunday 5pm (EST) through Friday 4pm (EST).
- Like any other active markets, there are good times and bad times to trade in forex also. Choosing to trade when the market is at its best can increase productivity and generate significant financial benefits. It will be wise to assume that trading intermittently throughout the day will produce the best results.
Forex Trading activities are found to be heaviest when major markets overlap. Statistics says, nearly two-thirds of New York activity occurs in the morning hours when European markets are also open. So you can figure out that at any given time, somebody somewhere in the world is buying and selling currencies.
Forex Trading Offers Fantastic Liquidity
The great liquidity offered by the forex trading and a market that is open for five and a half days a week offers you an exceptional array of choices to trade when you want.
But the volume of transactions reaches its peaks when the major market hours overlap -- the time when Asian market including Australia & New Zealand, the European market and the U.S. market are open simultaneously.
A typical trading day starts with New Zealand, before moving across to Australia, Japan and Asia, Europe and North America. The UK and the US markets account for around half of the total world market, therefore the times at which both are open are particularly busy.
Let’s find out quickly what are the overlapping timings:
* New York Market trade times: 8am - 4pm EST
* London Market trade times: 2am - 12Noon EST
* Great Britain Market trade times: 3am - 11am EST
* Tokyo Market trade times: 8pm - 4am EST
* Australia Market trade times: 7pm - 3am EST
So there are two times when two of the major markets overlap during trading hours -- between 2am and 4am EST for Asian/European markets and between 8am to 12pm EST for European/U.S. markets.
The market is open 24 hours a day doesn’t mean that it is always active. You can make money when the market is moving up or when it is moving down. It will be very difficult to make profit when the market doesn’t move at all.
Forex Trading is Open 24 Hours a Day
From practical experience it has been found out that the session when the London market is open with any other major market, the volume of transaction and market movement reaches its zenith.
Another interesting fact is - from actual trading figures you can see that during the middle of the week (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) the movement of all major currency pairs reaches their highest.
Choosing the right time between the start and the end of the week can also make differences to your trading success. If you are operating outside America you may have to wake up extremely early to catch the European markets and end your day extremely late to catch the Asian market.
So the time for trading is as important as your strategy for trading. If you have some preoccupation for which you can not use these hours you can go for an automated platform for the execution of the trades.
