Confused by trading hours on my charts

Hello all, I have just recently set up my demo trading account and am getting to grips with the technical analysis. Something that I’m mystified by and hope some one can answer for me please - when trading for example, GBP/JPY, the trading hours are from 24:00 to 08:00 UK time which equates to 09:00 - 17:00 Japanese time. Outside of these times I would have thought there is no trading at all so why do my charts look like trading continues?? Looking at my charts right now over the last 48 hours, it looks like trading carried on continuously for the full 48 hours. I noticed, however at the weekend, the charts went dead which is what I would also expect to happen outside of trading hours in the week. For your info., I’m using free chart software from Oanda and also FX power charts. Could anyone help me with this as I’m confused??? Thanks in advance.

Hello. :slight_smile:

Forex trading day ends 10:00PM gmt (5:00PM eastern), in which time a new day starts.

I suggest that you use demo from northfinance (MetaTrader) It won’t show you candlesticks of weekends, and the day open/close is 5:00PM eastern) that is the common used by forex traders.

Any more question, please go ahead.

Why does the trading day at forex end so soon… Do they ever go beyond 5:00 pm Eastern with the trading…like for special occasions?

Thanks for replying topchess. I’m not sure I’m really grasping this. Does it not depend on which currency you are trading as to what time trading here starts and ends? I mean for example, Japan is 9 hours ahead of UK so doesn’t that mean trading starts at midnight here (which is 9am in Japan) and runs until 08:00 UK time (which is 5pm in Japan). Whereas US is behind us so trading the GBP/US will be different times to trading GBP/JPY???

Oh, no…
Forex is full time market, you can trade 24 hours a day all currencies, the day open/close of all currencies trading is at 5:00PM Eastern Time.

Actually, that’s only partly correct - the 24 hour part aside… Charting packages can vary in terms of when they set the end of one trading day and the start of the next one. Most are 5pm US Eastern time, but not all.

Also, when brokers do the daily rollover and interest carry calculations can vary too.

Yes, the open/close will vary, I missed to include this. but you are right, actually I use one from northfinance which is based on 5:00pm est, that’s most common and what most traders use I guess.