Why do some people say London market closes at either 4PM or 5PM (GMT)?

Which one is it ?

I haven’t seen people saying it closes at 4.00pm, and that would be mistaken.

For forex purposes the “London session” is 8.00am to [B]5.00[/B]pm local time (but the regular floor trading hours of the London [I]Stock Exchange[/I] are 8.00am to [B]4.30[/B]pm).

[I]Thank you. [/I]

[B]Please correct me if I am wrong, this is what I have noted (GMT):
[/B]
Germany Open 7AM - Close 4PM
London Open 8AM - Close 5PM
New York 1PM Open - Close 10PM
Sydney 10PM Open - Close 7AM
Tokyo 12PM Open - Close 9AM

[B]Overlaps:
[/B]
London Tokyo - 8AM - 9AM

London & New York 1PM - 5PM

Tokyo & Sydney 12PM - 7AM

[B][I]Additional Question[/I]: Do traders in London primarily follow GMT or EST. I am considering acquiring separate wall clocks for London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney ? [/B]

There is an indicator you can download for metatrader called Forex Session. I use that to know when certain markets are open & overlapping

I am not sure that all of the exchanges you mentioned have a 9 hours trading session. NYSE for example is open 09:30 am to 4:00 pm ET.
Here is a link to some useful information about the trading hours of the exchanges around the world: Worldwide stock markets map shows the current open closed holiday status and current time for stock exchange- 24 hour format

Thank you, however the question is not regarding stock markets. [B]Forex only[/B].

Not sure if you were asking a trick question but there isn’t a London forex market as such, and globally the forex market doesn’t close overnight Monday-Thursday, so your original question was immediately skewed towards stock market hours by your words. Of course, many forex participating firms cease or reduce their operations for that particular day at a certain time. Chart providers often select a time that either suits them or their data providers or their customers, often a time when forex volume in their particular home time zone has dropped substantially.

The office / bank working day in the UK ends at 5pm so forex volume through London drops significantly at this time. So its a good time to use as the end of the day’s trading (but it technically isn’t, as above).

Something not mentioned here, so far as I’ve seen, is the fact that GMT and London time are NOT necessarily same. GMT is fixed. London time is subject to daylight savings shifts. Right now, London is an hour ahead of GMT.

There isn’t …

(I took the OP as referring to what people generally call “the London session”, which really means 9.00am to 5.00pm local time - when “institutional volume” is transacted.)

This is true. I hate this business of changing the clocks, which causes so much confusion, and always look at it in terms of either “local time” or “UK time” (itself a “movable feast”).

Y don’t just download the forex time app from Google play or App Store?wont it b more easy n better? Just suggestion.

Sorry man I must have overseen it :frowning: It is still a useful link though :stuck_out_tongue:
And also rhodytrader made a good point about the GMT and London time!

That’s a very good point.

Okay this information make it very clear. The reason why I had asked the question like this is because when I am looking from various sources such as youtube, apps, brokers or websites dedicated in giving “forex market” times for the major countries. Considering they physically say “market open/close” for a beginner they give a strong impression that this is when the market indeed actually opens and closes in those individual countries.

Which is why I noted the following:
Germany Open 7AM - Close 4PM
London Open 8AM - Close 5PM
New York 1PM Open - Close 10PM
Sydney 10PM Open - Close 7AM
Tokyo 12PM Open - Close 9AM

However combining this with the information from your responses. I conclude that there are no actual market closure times, and these times given are basically times when the markets are primarily most busy in each individual country. Which also explains why on the sites of several sources on forex times, they always state something along the lines of “[I]this [U]assumes local trading hours[/U] from 8AM-4PM or 8AM-5PM[/I]” Which is basically the local working hours in the country of whomever that publisher of that forex time information lives in.

This solves my confusion of why some say the forex hours tend to open at 8AM/9AM and close at 4PM/5PM. Or to put it [B]correctly[/B], depending on the country you are in, within this time is when the market is most busiest and after this time is when in comparison it is the least busy.
And the reason why this time is mostly busy is because this is when most forex participating firms as tommor also pointed out, are mostly in operation, i’m guessing this is when the phones are ringing in the brokerage firms, trading/investment firms and funds are trading these times assisting in the institutional trades and retail traders are joining in and supporting the action etc .

I will ignore GMT and stick to London times I have noted as an important guide. I was looking around for the “sessions indicator” which apparently gives you the session times directly on MT4, but after reading some reviews I believe that some countries are not even on there.
I had already noticed the times on my MT4 platform are incorrect and after some reading I quickly learned to ignore the times on the platform as apparently the broker sets them to match the country of where majority of their clientele are based or where the brokers office is based. Which also another reason why I wanted to make sure I got the timings correct.
So as one of the members on this thread greatly suggested, i’ve downloaded a free app from the App Store on my iPhone called Forex Hours. Now I can look at the information on the app or my notes and it actually makes sense to me.

Thank you for the clarification and tips everyone. :35: