It is important to know the currency trading times if you are going to begin trading currency on the foreign exchange market as a pastime or a way of making some extra money. When you trade currency, you aren’t restricted to business hours as you would be with the stock exchange. Forex is a global market so it crosses many various time-zones. The foreign exchange market is open twenty-four hours a day, but only 5 days a week. You might also find it closed in most states (and terribly quiet in others) on days that are vacations in most of the major economic powers, such as Christmas.
In fact in several parts of the world, foreign exchange trading times begin on sunday evening or perhaps earlier. This is because the first markets to open are in Australia and New Zealand, which are before most other parts of the planet. At 8 am Monday in Sydney it is ten pm sunday in London, 5 pm Sun in new york and two pm Sun in LA. Those times may change a little due to seasonal hour adjustments in the different countries except for most people it suggests that if you want to start trading sunday night, you can. However, the market is going to be pretty quite at that time, at least till the clock gets around to 8 am in London and the UK and western european trading floors open up for business. Before that, it’s what is sometimes known as the Asian session which could be an excellent time to be online if you’re trading a cross pair whose markets are both open such as the Aussie dollar and the yen, but otherwise there is less happening. This means that the best forex trading times for noobs are when the London and Manhattan markets are open, and especially in the overlap of those times. These are the two busiest trading floors. The overlap happens when it’s morning in NY and afternoon in the UK, and that is when you will see the highest volume of trading in just about all currency pairs. Remember, we are not limited to trading our own nations currency, so a trader in new york could be dealing in EUR/GBP or just about any other pair.
At the other end of the week the situation repeats, with the Sydney market closing first, when it is still Thursday in many other time zones.
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