What Are The Best Hours For Forex Trading?

Friday, August 29, 2008

What Are The Best Hours For Forex Trading?

by: Adrian Pablo
Forex is a highly dynamic market with lots of price oscillations in a single minute, this characteristic of the Forex market allows traders to enter the market many times a day and pull some profit from these number of trades. If you want to find an appreciable number of profitable trades you need to enter the forex market at the best period of time, i.e., when the activity, the volume of transactions, is the highest.

The main timing characteristics of the Forex market are the following:

* Forex is 24 hour market – It starts from Sunday 5pm EST through Friday 4pm EST. Rollover at 5pm EST
* Forex Trading begins in New Zealand, followed by Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and America
* The US & UK account for more than 50% of the market transactions
* Forex Major markets: London, New York, Tokyo
* Nearly two-thirds of NY activity occurs in the morning hours while European markets are open.
* Forex Trading activity is heaviest when major markets overlap.

From this timing facts, it is quite visible that at any given time, somebody somewhere in the world is buying and selling currencies. As one market closes, another market opens. Business hours overlap, and the exchange continues as day becomes night and night becomes day.

The great liquidity of Forex, combined with a market that's traded 5.5 days a week around the world, offers you an exceptional independence and choices to trade Forex when you want to and not when the market wants you to do it. Trades always develop with relatively the same frequency, regardless of time. As long as the Forex market is open, there is about the same probability that you will find a trade, whenever your look for it.

During each trading day, the total Forex “volume” is determined by the number of markets that are open and the times each of these markets overlap one another.

Forex market volume of transactions remains high during the whole day, but peaks highest when the Asian market(including Australia & New Zealand), the European market and the U.S. market are open simultaneously. And these are the trading hours you must target in order to find the highest possible amount of profitable trades.

This is the breakdown of OPEN Market Times for your reference:

* 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

If you pay attention to the last schedule you will notice that there are two times when two of the major markets overlap during trading hours; between 2am and 4am EST (Asian/European) and between 8am to 12pm EST(European/N. American).

So here you have it, if you want to find a great number of profitable trades, focus on the hours when the markets tend to make their biggest moves, i.e., during these big markets overlaps, which therefore, are usually the Best Times to Trade.