Forex market hours: Sydney, Tokyo, London, New York
The four sessions and their overlap, on your local clock. No sign-up, no account, and nothing following you around.
Sessions and overlap
21:32Europe/Paris
Open: New York — closes in 1h 27m
- Sydney23:00 – 08:00
Opens the week on Sunday evening. Thin volume.
New York time: 17:00 – 02:00 - Tokyo01:00 – 10:00
The Asian session. Often a range, which later serves as liquidity.
New York time: 19:00 – 04:00 - London09:00 – 17:30
The largest forex session by volume.
New York time: 03:00 – 11:30 - New York14:00 – 23:00
Indices and the dollar. Overlaps London until the European close.
New York time: 08:00 – 17:00 - London / New York overlap14:00 – 17:30
The two largest venues open at once: the day’s volatility peak.
New York time: 08:00 – 11:30
Windows are defined in New York time and converted to your zone. That is deliberate: the American and European clock changes do not fall in the same weeks, and twice a year a hand-copied schedule is wrong for a fortnight.
The overlap matters more than the sessions
Knowing London is open is not much use on its own. What changes the day is the moment London and New York are open at once: the two largest venues in the world trading simultaneously, order books at their thickest, and moves with enough fuel to reach their targets.
It is also why the same setup is not worth the same thing at every hour. The drawing is identical, the volume behind it is not — and it is the volume that decides whether a liquidity sweep goes somewhere or falls back.
Read next: Killzone
The Asian session, and what to do with it
Tokyo often produces a narrow range rather than a trend. That is not a flaw: the range becomes the liquidity London comes looking for at the open. Its extremes are obvious levels, so places where stops pile up, so targets.
Plenty of beginners try to trade the Asian session like the others and complain that "nothing moves". More often than not, the right read is to let it form and then use it.
Read next: Liquidity (buy-side / sell-side)