When To Trade The Markets

A lot of traders love the fact that the forex markets are open around the clock as it provides many more trading opportunities than the equities markets. The only downside to a market that is open 24/6 is that you can’t possibly watch it all the time and as a result your are bound to miss trades from time to time.

With that said don’t get hung up on the trades you are bound to miss and simply try to make the most out of the time you do have trading the forex markets. To help make your time most productive, it helps to put more focus on the trading days that have the most movement. With that said, the best days to trade forex are:

Best: Tuesday and Wednesday

Second Best: Monday and Thursday

Third Best: Friday and Sunday – These days are slowest because people are not at work or taking extended weekend breaks.

Two great pairs to trade are the GBP/USD and USD/JPY during high volume times.

These times are the London open from 6AM – 8AM GMT and the New York Open from 1PM – 4PM GMT.
You can’t expect to trade well if there is no-one to trade with. So timing is very important, sure you will hear that the markets are open 24 hours a day. But some hours are better than others.

Below are the different FOREX trading sessions:

Markets EST GMT PST Session
Tokyo Open 7PM 0:00 4PM Asian
Tokyo Close
4AM 9:00 1AM
London Open 3AM 8:00 12AM European
London Close 12PM 17:00 9AM
NY Open
8AM 13:00 5AM American
NY Close
5PM 22:00 2PM
Sydney Open
3PM 20:00 12PM Oceania
Sydney Close 11PM 4:00 8PM

At present, there are 5 time zone changes per year that affect the majors if you include New Zealand. If you do not include New Zealand, then there are 3 during the year not two as some people believe. These periods are as follows:

On the last Sunday of March, Europe and the UK switch from standard time to Daylight Savings Time (DST) and Australia switches from standard time to DST.

On the first Sunday of April, North America switches from standard time to DST.

On the third Sunday in May, New Zealand switches from DST to standard time.

On the first Sunday in October, New Zealand switches from standard time to DST.

On the last Sunday in October, Europe and North America switch from DST to standard time and Australia switches from standard time to DST.

Hong Kong and Japan do not adjust their clocks. They stay at the same offset from GMT all year.

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