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The working hours of Forex trading sessions
Forex market works around the clock, from Sunday/Monday night to Friday/Saturday night. The work time of brokers can differ a little. Here is very important information about the time when the exchange market is open.
For rational scheduling of your work and for using your time and abilities with maximum result you could reach on Forex market, you should absolutely understand how this market works. Moreover, you have to know when and where you must be waiting for its moving, to learn more about the time of trading sessions, of activity decreasing and of lunch breakdowns on the main world exchange markets.
There are Forex dialers, ready to give you possibility to enter the market instantly, in all time zones and in the main world trading centers (London, Frankfurt, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, etc.). Forex's daily trading volume is from $1 billion to $3 billions and this volume is enough to guarantee the practically unlimited liquidity. This huge daily trading volume and the stable 100% buying power make Forex market get unrivaled in reliability, dynamism, money making possibility and vehemence in comparison with all the world markets.
The work day of the currency dealers of the western commercial banks starts, as a rule, at 7:30 a.m. by local time. At 8:00 a.m. dealers are already making the transactions actively. The morning half an hour is devoted to a short analysis of the events, taken place on the world exchange markets by the opening time. Dealers use the economic and technical analysis of the market behavior, read the analytic articles and exchange the view points and buzzes with one another and with dealers of the other commercial banks. On the basis of this information, they get a pattern of possible currency behavior this day, and moreover, all variants of all kinds of probable events get evident as well.
The market, consisting of independent dealers, has worked-out the behavior strategy on the whole to 8:00 a.m. and is ready to take part in the world transactions, stimulating the currency exchange in that way. Different territorial markets have their own typical daily activity.
Far East
The USD-JPY, USD-EUR, EUR-JPY and USD-AUD transactions are the main here. Currency exchange fluctuations are not very significant at this time, but the breathtaking currency ups and downs take place at times, esp. for USD-JPY currency pair. As a rule, it happens when Japanese Reserve Bank starts the exchange market intervention. It is night and morning in Moscow and it is possible to work on Tokyo market before midday and on Singapore one before lunch.
Western Europe
The European financial markets in Zurich, Frankfurt-on-Main, Paris and Luxembourg are open from 7:00 a.m. GMT. However, the really active USD-European currencies moving starts at 8:00 a.m. as soon as London market opens. It takes 2-3 hours, as a rule, and after that the European dealers have lunch, and the market activity decreases a little.
North America
Forex trading livens up again as soon as New York market opens at 1:00 p.m. - the dealers of American banks start working and the European dealers are back from lunch. The Forex dealers are waiting for the New York market opening impatiently to get the new information about the possible currency moving (esp. if the European market was slack). After the European market closing about 5:00 p.m., the aggressive American banks, being alone on the "thin" market, are able to stimulate a sharp USD-the other currencies change.
The American and Asian trading sessions are the most aggressive; the biggest transaction volume falls on European session; the New Zealand and Australian sessions are the most composed.
- The time of full trading activity for JPY is from 00:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. GMT.
- There are two trading activity peaks for European currencies - from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. (with the opening of North American session) and at times up to 7:00 p.m. GMT.
- You have to be very attentive, remaining unprovoked esp. on Mondays, because just in Mondays the non-professional traders make the transactions esp. actively, trying to repair the Sunday omission.
- In case you play on the intraday patterns, you shouldn't risk keeping the rates open for the weekend and esp. for the holidays. It is very common situation when the market opens at another price after the weekends and holidays, if something happened in the world these days. The market can open "with a gap" and the stop-loss doesn't save you, because your broker will buy in at the opening price that "eats up" your deposit.
- When most of the big players end up trading and leave the market, it is possible to face the following situation - the other players use the "thin" market to sway it and make the short speculation trading they never could make while the big players are on the market due to lack recourses. Don't wonder at the sharp and sudden market rising in two or three hours before closing prior to Easter. As soon as the big players enter the market after the holidays, the balance is back. But someone will make several hundreds of billions dollars. If you understand what's up and try to hit this jackpot, then you have to join the game and stop at the proper time. But if you will join the market in the last 15 minutes before closing and keep the open rate, thinking that "market just didn't have time enough to go further due to the holidays", it is very possible you lose big money after holidays:And it is only one example of how it is important to know all the rules of Forex trading.
Time zones
Time zones are counting out from the prime meridian of Greenwich (not far from London). The Greenwich Time is called the world time or GMT. Depending on season (summer or winter), the local time differs from GMT in the world financial centers by the value you could find in the table below:
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