Forex Markets Open
Market Hours: Can currency trading 24 / 7?
The Forex Market hours extend from Monday in Sydney, Australia to Friday afternoon in New York. During that time the market is open somewhere in the world at any time of day or night.
However, there is a market of 24 / 7 and is closed on weekends. 24 / 5 would be more accurate.
If you need to know the exact time when the markets open and close, we must take account time zones. It's very simple when expressed in UTC. This is the Coordinated Universal Time, formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time. This is the standard (winter) the time in Greenwich, London, which is the point of zero longitude on the globe.
Thus, the normal hours in the forex market are Friday from 22.00 UTC to 22:00 UTC on Sunday. This is 10 hours in the UK in the winter.
New York is 5 hours behind the UK as the global currency market opens and closes at 5 pm Sunday and Friday in New York, 14:00 in the U.S. west coast, 11 hours, Germany, 8 am, Monday / Saturday in Sydney.
Things get a little complicated when you start to try to take the summer daylight saving time into account. This makes an hour difference in countries that observe it. But daylight saving time works differently in the Southern Hemisphere countries like Australia have daylight saving time starting in September March, from March to September.
Time for the various national markets most important are:
Sydney: 10 pm-7 am UTC
Tokyo: 12 midnight to 9 am UTC
London: 8 am-5 pm UTC
Nueva York: 1:00 p.m. to 22:00 UTC
Or we can say that in EST (U.S. eastern time):
Sydney: 5 pm to 2:00 a.m. ET
Tokyo: 7 pm to 4:00 a.m. ET
London: 3 morning at 12 o'clock CEST
New York: 8 am to 5 pm EST
You can see that they correspond to cover 24 hours.
However, this does not necessarily means that trade will be good at all times. Just after opening a large market, prices may be very volatile and unpredictable. Many merchants will stay outside the foreign exchange market to an hour four times a day in the financial markets are taking place in these great cities.
The U.S. dollar is the currency most actively traded by a long way, involved in 2.5 times as many trades as its nearest rival the euro. This means that events in the U.S. have a greater impact on financial markets developments in other countries. The market tends to slow down New York at 3 pm local time (20:00 UTC) and if you are involved in a couple of U.S. dollars, this may be a good time to stop operating during the day.
So in theory you can operate 24 hours a day Sunday night to Friday night. Automated software in the form of a Forex Robot can even make this physically possible. However, a prudent merchant will choose time and is not activated during all Forex Market Hours.
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PM Forex Trading Outlook – DailyFX March 11, 2010