As you are probably aware, the FX online trading markets trade nearly 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. If the forex market is open nearly all the time, is there an optimal time to trade? Your goal should be to trade when there is a considerable trading range, and avoid trading when the prices slide into a narrow side ways range.

We are going to look at several markets. The trading hours are all listed as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). You will need to convert these times to your local time zone. As examples:

• New York DST is GMT -5 (so when it’s 6pm in London, it’s 1pm in NY)
• Los Angeles DST is GMT -8
• Frankfurt / Paris are GMT +1
• Tokyo is GMT +8
• Melbourne / Sydney are +9

There are many FX online trading websites that trade these various markets when they are open. Let’s look at several key regions:

London Trading Session

In London, the forex opens at 8 am GMT. It closes at 4 pm GMT. Typically, the most active currency pairs that trade during this session is the EURUSD. This pair usually makes up nealry 40% of the trading volume. Second to the EURUSD, would be the GBPUSD with nearly 25% of the volume. The next most active pairs are: the USDJPY with 17% of the volume; the USDCHF with 6%; and the USDCAD with 5%.

European Trading Session

The European currency trading opens at 7am GMT, and closes at 3 pm GMT. Typically, the European session is the most volatile session of all.

New York Trading Session

The New York forex session is open from 1pm GMT until 8pm GMT. The New York forex market is the second largest market place in the world. The busiest time is from 1pm GMT until 5pm GMT. Market volatility can be dramatically impacted by news releases. Trading activity is usually my lighter during the final three hours of trading each day.

Asian Trading Session

The Tokyo forex opens at 1am GMT and closes at 8am GMT. Sometimes volatility is low and sometimes good moves occur. In the market, as you might expect, the USDJPY pair is the most active currency pair traded. It dominates this market with nearly 80% of the volume. Much of the remaining volume is made up of the EURUSD and the EURJPY.

If you want to be an FX Online Trading professional, you need to know which markets are open when.

Best Time for FX Online Trading is a post from: Forex Alerts

Best Time for FX Online Trading is from Forex Alerts

Related posts:

1. Esssential FX Online Trading Terms
2. FX Online Trading Introduction