I wanted to know that what is the market hours for the following four cities in their respective ‘local time’ (not GMT or EST).
[ul]
[li]Sydney
[/li][li]Tokyo
[/li][li]London
[/li][li]Newyork
[/li][/ul]
Thanks.
In terms of local time, every location in the world is the same:
Normal business hours in most locations are 8am-5pm local time.
All retail banks, most commercial and investment banks, most stock exchanges, and most other non-retail businesses open and close for the day sometime between the hours of 8am and 5pm.
The “forex market” is “open” 24 hours per day (except for approximately 48 hours on the weekend) everywhere in the world.
But, the volume of forex trading coming from a particular location varies greatly throughout the 24-hour day. In every location in the world, including the cities you asked about, more than 80% of each day’s forex trading volume occurs in the 8am-5pm local time period.
So, for all of the cities you asked about (and for almost any other city you might care to mention), the answer is:
8am-5pm local time.
Is this true though? Right now it is almost 11 AM Sydney time, and their market has been open two hours, right…
Same for Japan - about to open, coming up on 9 A.M. in Tokyo.
I also read somewhere that Sydney goes two hours apart during DST (so it opens at a different time according to the current U.S.A. time zones) - do these sites (like forex factory, a really nice calendar) always show the right times?
The original poster asked about “the market hours”, by which he clearly meant the forex market hours, in 4 different cities.
He probably understands (and you probably understand, as well) that the forex market is open 24 hours per day in every country of the world. Therefore, any definition of “forex market hours” essentially involves an artificial construct.
[B]We refer to the normal business day as the “forex trading day” in every location, because the vast majority of forex trading occuring in that location occurs during normal business hours in that location.[/B]
Arbitrarily, we use 8am-5pm local time as the “normal business day” in each location. But, or course, there probably are local exceptions to this generalized time period.
You refer to the market in Tokyo opening at 9am Tokyo time. That is the opening time of the [B]stock market,[/B] not the normal business day.
You refer to the market in Sydney being open for 2 hours, beginning at 9am local time. I don’t know what market that is.
In Sydney, the normal business day begins at 8am. Most commercial and retail banks open at 9:30am. The stock market (Australian Securities Exchange) opens at 10am. Economic data (news releases) typically come out at 11:30am. The stock exchange and the banks close at 4pm. The normal business day ends at 5pm. The “forex market” in Australia remains open during this entire period, and throughout the overnight period — it’s a 24 hour market.
During the 8am-5pm normal business day in Sydney, more than 80% of Australia’s total daily forex trading occurs. That’s almost 10% of daily volume per hour, on average. The remainder of Australia’s total daily volume (less than 20% of the total) occurs in the 15 overnight hours from 5pm to 8am the next day. That’s a little over 1% of daily volume per hour, on average.
This might help you — 301 Moved Permanently
Regarding Daylight Saving Time in Australia, New Zealand, and any other southern-hemisphere country which observes Daylight Saving Time, the shift in time is [B]only one hour.[/B]
However, those countries turn their clocks [B]back[/B] one hour at about the same time of year that northern-hemisphere countries are turning their clocks [B]forward[/B] one hour. The result is that the time difference between, say, New York and Sydney changes by 2 hours each spring and fall.
The depth of the calendar you sent helps a lot. I assumed these market clocks on various sites were referring to the normal business hours, so it surprised me that for Tokyo and Sydney they say their day starts at 9:00 A.M. local time.
The thing is, when looking at the “open” today, the activity seemed to pick up when those clocks said it was 2:00 P.M. PST, and they said that was 9:00 A.M. in Syndey’s local time (which I verified on a world clock) - is it just that some brokers are “cutting” where they start showing their data an hour later than the “true opening time”?
From another perspective, I would have expected to see the activity/chart start at 1:00 P.M. PST, as that would have been 8:00 AM in Sydney time.
The rest of your response generated another question - is the goal to stay within regular business hours for the time zone native to the currency you’re trading (opposite the U.S.), or stock market hours, for maximum opportunities/lowest spread, in a given currency pair? Or is the effect just not that great, and it’s the total worldwide activity in all currencies that counts (i.e., the cross times)?
Maybe I am just thinking too much in terms of stock and futures markets, where there are certain times that volatility makes trading much riskier, and those times are set in stone (like 9:30-10 EST for U.S. stock markets).
EDIT: Just wanted to add a thank you explicitly for the thorough answer, I was actually surprised to see such a knowledgeable response over one line - kind of like a short term trade that just keep going beyond all your original profit targets!
Thanks man that’s very useful! Have yet to explore Oanda. Just joined yesterday. 
If you search the internet for “forex trading hours”, you will not find perfect agreement among the sources listed. Many will agree with the 9-hour business day that I referred to. But, you will also find some that say the forex trading day is 8 hours in duration — either 8am-4pm local time, or 9am-5pm local time.
As I said in my previous post, there can be local variations to the 8am-5pm time period that I gave you. Also, I emphasized that the 8am-5pm time period for the “normal business day” is arbitrarily chosen.
You are noticing differences in the daily volume patterns of various countries. These differences are real; you are not imagining them.
If you are at your screens at 8am London time, you will notice how forex activity (volume and price movement) often surges beginning at 8am, almost on the dot. London is the 600-lb gorilla of forex trading, doing more than twice as much volume every day as any other market. And they get off to a rollicking start almost every day, almost like an exchange with an opening bell.
Zurich (or, if you prefer, Frankfurt) opens an hour earlier than London. Sometimes Zurich takes off on its own, and sometimes Zurich hangs loose waiting to see what London is going to do. After London has opened, the forex activity which we see on our charts is the combined effect of the London market and all of continental Europe.
Tokyo, unlike London, is normally very subdued for the first hour of their business day, until the stock exchanges in Tokyo and Osaka open at 9am (as you have observed). Tokyo is the largest individual player in the Asian market; but, overall, Tokyo accounts for less than half of the total forex volume in Asia. Singapore (266 billion USD/day) plus Hong Kong (238 billion USD/day) account for more forex volume than Tokyo (312 billion USD/day). In addition to those three heavy-weights, the Asian market includes Korea, China and Taiwan, together totalling another 82 billion USD/day in forex volume.
The U.S. market generaly gets rolling around the nominal 8am start of the business day, but the “opening” of the forex trading day can be subdued if the market is anticipating news releases at 8:30am and/or waiting for clues from the opening of the currency futures market at 8:20am (New York time), or the stock market at 9:30am.
If you were to draw graphs of the forex trading volume, hour-by-hour, in the countries described above, your graphs would all resemble distorted bell-curves, with volume rising rapidly sometime between 7am and 9am, and falling off rapidly sometime in the afternoon. But, these distorted bell-curves would differ from one another in various ways. The graph for the U.S. forex market would peak in the hour between 9am and 10am on most days. But, other countries would display somewhat different daily patterns.
It’s hard to generalize. For most currency pairs, most traders would tell you that the optimum times to trade are when worldwide trading volume is the highest — the first 3 hours of the London session (8am-11am London time), and the first 3 hours of the New York session (8am-11am New York time).
For a look at worldwide forex trading volume, hour by hour, refer to this. This chart is the result of my own calculations, and it may or may not stand the test of time.
There are some exceptions to the suggestion (8am-11am in London and New York), given above.
Michael Huddleston suggests Kill Zones for stalking trades, as follows: the London Open Kill Zone 7am-9am London time, the New York Open Kill Zone 7am-9am New York time, the London Close Kill Zone 4pm-6pm London time, and the Asian Kill Zone 7am-11am Tokyo time. Notice that these Kill Zones are each 2 hours in duration, except the Asian Kill Zone.
Some currency pairs are best traded in their “home” markets — the USD/CAD is a notable example. Also, during the Asian Session, there generally is more action in the yen-pairs than in non-yen-pairs.
I hope this info helps you.
Clint, this is some of the most useful information I’ve ever seen in a message board, period (on any topic). Thank you very much, sir!
I really like your chart and how you created it, it is amazing that is not in the intro chapter of every forex book/tutorial. I am looking forward to the Kill Zones thread, also. And the explanation of how sometimes Zurich leads, other times stays pat, really helped explain the nature of the market much better. The way all these sites and learning materials polarize the trading centers to the four cities always cited is sort of misleading, I think.
Thanks for the kind words.
Then, fasten your seat-belt. That thread is well on its way to 1,000 pages, 10,000 replies, and 1,000,000 views. Attempting to dig into it can be a daunting proposition.
My advice: concentrate on page 1 of that thread, where the videos are arranged sequentially; they will lead you from market basics to sophisticated trading.
And keep an eye on the last 5 or 10 posts in the thread, just to keep up with the current conversation, and to be alerted to live webinars, which happen on short notice, on an irregular schedule. Most (but not all) of the webinars are recorded, either by Michael or by other members, but they don’t all get posted on page 1 of the thread.
Michael Huddleston is the premiere trader on this Forum, hands down, no debate. And he is the best and most active teacher on this Forum. Regardless of your present trading knowledge and skill, you can gain the equivalent of a college education in forex trading from Michael. Believe me, he’s that good.
I agree. That’s why I like to divide worldwide forex trading into seven “sessions”, rather than four. The seven, in geographical order, are: Wellington (New Zealand), Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, London and New York. (Here’s more info). But, even this is deceptive. It implies some sort of equivalence among these “important” trading centers.
A quick look at volume figures confirms that it’s crazy to consider Wellington and London as equals in terms of size: New Zealand accounts for 9 billion USD per day in forex volume, while the U.K. accounts for 1,854 billion USD per day. In other words, Wellington’s trading volume amounts to less than ½ of 1% of London’s trading volume.
So, why even include Wellington? Only one reason: the NZD is among the 10 most heavily-traded currencies in the world. Altogether, those seven “sessions” represent the “home markets” of all 10 of those currencies.
A case can be made for dividing the world into [B]three[/B] major, regional forex markets: Tokyo (if we understand that to mean all of Asia plus Australia and New Zealand), London (if we understand that to include all of central Europe plus Ireland and South Africa), and New York (if we understand that to mean all of North America).
Looked at this way, the “Tokyo market” is a 1,099 billion USD per day market; the “London market” is a 2,756 billion USD per day market; and the “New York market” is a 983 billion USD per day market.
Are you shocked that New York comes in last? How can that be, given the fact that the highest trading volume of the day typically occurs in the first 3 hours of the New York session?
The answer lies in overlap. The first 3 hours of the New York session overlap the last 3 hours of the Zurich session and the 6th, 7th and 8th hours of the London session. There is no other time of day when 19 countries, accounting for 75% of total world forex volume, are all “open” at the same time. “Open”, in this context, means that they are in the midst of their 8am-5pm normal business days.
There’s one other factor that argues for dividing the globe into three regional forex markets. The big banks which are the heavy-hitters in the worldwide interbank network typically maintain “trading desks” in at least three major financial centers around the globe. In almost every case, those three centers are London, New York and Tokyo. As the normal business day winds down in one location, each bank’s position and order book is passed from one office to the next. This happens seamlessly, and we never see it or feel it. Kathy Lien has written an article in Investopedia which details some of this — The Foreign Exchange Interbank Market
Trading activity attracts trading activity, and the clustering of powerful banks in specific locations tends to make those locations grow in importance. How else would you explain the fact that London is so important financially, given the fact that the U.K. is not the most powerful economy in the world? It has to do with 400 years of powerful banks wanting to be “right next door” to other powerful banks, in that one-square-mile area of London known as “The City of London”, or simply as “The Square Mile”.
Well, I’ve just about beaten this horse to death. So, it’s time to move on.
Take care.
I hope this is not too stupid a question, but when i look up charts on my Meta-4 platform, are the hours on the bottom local Eastern Standard Time or GMT/London time?